The Communist Origin of the Modern Conservative Movement VI

The result of believing in the irrational is acting irrationally. The bombings in Brussels are certainly irrational acts. The bombings were done for the greater glory of God but accomplished nothing. When you serve an invisible being that is only a product of epileptic seizures irrational thinking just begets more irrational thinking. Reality becomes just an illusion and the illusion becomes reality. Many killers see absolutely nothing wrong with killing people because after all they are not really dead but simply went to a better place to be with God. Religious military movements like ISIS convince followers that they will be richly rewarded in heaven on Tuesday for atrocities done on Monday. Once you accept irrational thinking as a reality anything is possible. Once you are no longer tethered to the ground by reason you will accept the existence of any type of magical being with any type of magical powers. Morality no longer has to have a rational reason for existence. Morality becomes only what your religious leaders tell you it is. Religion cuts us off from the rational part of our brain. Once you abandon reason you are like a computer with a virus all sorts of calculations are wrong.

The real enemy in this fight is magical thinking. It is those who are driven by magical thinking that are committing the atrocities. From 9/11 to Brussels the blood continues to fill the streets. How much blood will it take to satisfy their God? History has shown us that there is no amount of human blood that will satisfy a God. Whether it is killing and torturing witches or blowing people up the supernatural super heroes see no value in human life. Human sacrifice was common in early religions and even in the bible human sacrifice was acceptable form of honoring your God. Brussels was all about human sacrifice to their God. The irrationality of religious belief can be seen in human sacrifice. Sacrificing people on an alter is no different to blowing them up. Religion violates are inborn reason and our inborn morality.

What is the true nature of reality? Reality at first glance seems like a simple concept but it is far more complex than we would like to believe. Certainly objects we can see and touch are real. What about opinions? They could be correct or incorrect. Reality has to be divided into two categories consensuses reality, the reality that could be agreed on by the majority, like the light is red and personal reality, like the nature of God. We experience reality through light waves, sound waves, and touch. We can examine a rock and feel that it is rough to the touch, it has color, and makes a sound when knocked into another rock. We experience the call of a bird when the sound waves reach our ears. Walking near the edge of a cliff we experience fear because we project ourselves into the future and realize we could fall over the cliff. Does the rock have color or is it just the frequency of light that is reflected to us? We depend on are senses to tell us about the world. What of dreams? Surely they are assembled out of fragments of the real world but most of us realize that this is fiction be generated by our minds. If we dream of a dead relative advising us we do not expect to wake and find them in the room. Nevertheless many believe that dead relatives still alive and can contact them. This is part of the personal reality for that individual.

What of God? If consensuses reality is the determinate of reality and numbers rule, God would certainly qualify as a reality. But in the past consensuses reality dictated the earth was flat and at the center of the universe. So even consensuses reality does not determine what is real. Consensuses reality is no better then the quality of the information we have at the time. Even though a majority of people on earth would give God a consensuses reality their concept of God are very different. The reality of God is that he is on the way to destroy the world and most world religions want to bring about the destruction of the world as quickly as possible. Christian sects can hardly wait for the destruction of world and ISIS believes it is currently fighting the final battle before the end of the world. If your reality is God and heaven is your final destination why not just destroy the obstacle in your way?

The pathway to God are many and varied. Want to actually to see God? Some religions use psychedelic to have vision God. Other fast for day dropping their blood sugar so low they experience visions of God. Still others go up on high up on mountains where their brains are deprived of oxygen causing hallucinations. Mosses went up the mountain to get the Ten Commandments meanwhile his followers had discovered a new God in his absence. A brain deprived of oxygen when close to deaths generates Near Death Experience (NDE) where often the subjects personal vision of God personally welcoming him to the afterlife. NDE can also be generated using NASA giant centrifuge as the G forces are raised the pilot loses consciousness and has a NDE. I suspect those who practice auto erotic asphyxiation are on a first name only basses with God. When I was a teenager the head of a local hospital was found after he took that practice too far.

Are drug trips reality? They are considered valid religious practice by some. Fasting to the point of starvation is also away a way to bend reality and was a common religious practice. Religion is like a colony of termites constantly eating away the structure of reality.

Tomorrow many Americans will celebrate one of the biggest religious holidays but is the holiday based on reality or myth? In the book “The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold” by Acharya S looks closely at the historical record during the time Christ was supposed to have lived and there are virtually no reference to any such being except for a couple of obvious forgeries. The bible is one of the biggest frauds, supposedly written by the disciples who witnessed actual events but they were long dead when the bible was written. The bible is a myth written by imposters. The myth of Christ does not come into play until at least a hundred years after his supposed death. Sacred places were manufactured like religious relics. At one time there were 26 burial shrouds of which the Shroud of Turin is just one. Even the image of Jesus is a complete fraud. The early images of Jesus Christ are of a blond man with no beard. There were factories that made religious relics. The will to believe is so strong that no amount of facts can dissuade a believer.

At 5K race this morning down in Kentucky a runner collapsed after the race and CPR was preformed on him for 10 minutes until the ambulance arrived. The paramedics worked on him for another 5 minutes before he started breathing on his own. He would be a good candidate for a Near Death Experience where he would see God coming for him. His brain would have been deprived of oxygen setting off a possible religious experience. It is likely that the brain was designed to ease us into death. Death is a traumatic experience. Just as the brain is designed live it must at the same time be designed die to make death less traumatic. The cushion is mythology. The fact that brain based religious experiences can be accessed in different ways from, fasting or starvation, chanting, speaking in tongues, blacking out from centrifugal force, or drugs tells us we have accessed a design feature of the brain. The fact that it can be accessed from so many different ways tell us more about us than any god because in that region of the brain contains the residue of all the Gods since the beginning time. We breathed life into God he does not breath life into us.

The Pope today in his Easter Sunday address denounced terrorism but not a word to criticize its driving cause, religion. How could a religious icon criticize any religion without knowing that his religion was vulnerable to the same critique? You can never separate the bombings from their motives. If you remove the motive you stop the bombings. But the Pope is unwilling to take on the religious motives that underlie the bombings. The Pope fully realizes that he is the inevitable target in a God war and security was extremely tight at Vatican City. The Pope called it “blind” terrorism but terrorism is not blind, it is planned out very carefully. This is a war based on monotheism. If monotheistic religions are true than there can only be one true God. All the armies of the world can stage one last battle to determine which God is the one true God. The Pope and other world religious dwell in an egocentric illusion where their God is the only true God. It breeds competition for followers and intolerance of those with different illusions. If you were sure that you had found the one true God then others that deny that are enemies of your God. Why not kill them they have committed a capital offence against your God by not believing he is the one true God surely that deserves a death sentence.

The Pope is trying to separate the bombings from their cause. It would be like driving the Pope mobile over boards with nails in them and denying that the nails caused the flats. The Pope is not being honest with himself or others. The Catholic Church is acting just as it did when the child molesting by Priests got out of hand. The first consideration was not the boys that were being molested it was that the church’s reputation would be damaged. The incidents were keep quiet and the molesters transferred to other unsuspecting Parishes and the molestation continued unabated. If the Pope placed the blame squarely where it belonged, on religion, and said that it is not the will of God to bomb people to facilitate the spread of any religion he would be admitting that no man actually knows the will of God. To blame religion for terrorism would make God no more than a terrorist. To criticize religion in any way damages all religions, it damages the belief structure that underlies all religion and the Pope would rather the terrorism continue unabated then it damage the underlying structure of religious belief. When it is your job to maintain the illusion there will always be a price in human lives. The Pope will turn his head and watch the bombings continue, just as the church turned it head and let the molestation continue. To Pope it is simply a choice of the lesser of two evils.

A definitive study of Near Death Experiences (NDE) using members of different religions might help provide some answers about the nature of God. If a person near death was actually seeing God during a NDE the reports from members of different religions should be consistent settling the argument as to which is the one true God. At the point of death people are preconditioned by their culture as to what version of God they will experience.

A 1986 study of NDE experienced by Hindus in India showed they were different from those experienced by American Christians. The typical NDE reported by a Hindu is that they are taken to an after death realm by functionary at which time they discover a mistake has been made and sends the person back. In a typical American experience the subjects reports floating over their body before being sucked down a long tunnel illuminated by bright light where dead relatives are waiting for them. The bright light is of course God who sometimes speaks directly to them. Instead of telling them a mistake has been made the subject is given the option of staying or returning to his body. The old spiritual “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” is likely from a NDE from another time period “where a band of angels is coming after me.” A pilot in a fighter plane who blacks out in a steep dive and experience an NDE might see Jesus coming after him in an F-15. The suicide bomber’s NDE might be Mohammed whisking him away to heaven a fraction of second before the bomb explodes.

Human being are exposed to both truth and fiction throughout our lifetime and sometimes truth and fiction are so tightly intertwined that we lose the ability to separate them. Fiction lets our reach exceed our grasp. It enables us to see what could be and make it so but it is also the land where monsters and Gods are created. We can create fables that relate truths or tyrants that dictate the tiniest details of our lives; from the way we dress to how we spend ever minute of our time. Truth and fiction are so tightly interwoven now that it is a Herculean task to separate them. In all societies children are taught that their religion is the absolute truth but a close examination of facts show all religion to be fictitious passed down to us by conmen and crooks.

The man involved in a shooting in the Whitehouse yesterday is believed to be a preacher from Tennessee. He had visited the Whitehouse once before shouting in a House Session that he was a prophet of God. The court had issued a court order that he stay away from the Whitehouse. “How dare they keep a prophet of God away from government.” This guy is as valid a prophet of God as all the other so called prophet of God throughout history. Mental hospitals are full of people who believe they are a prophet of God or even God himself. Since we now know religious experiences are generated in a certain part of the brain by different causes, from epilepsy to drugs we have to question the origin of all religions.

No doubt Larry Russell Dawson, from Antioch, Tennessee, the man involved yesterday’s shooting had many followers who believe he is a prophet of God and regularly attend services at his church. They are no different from others who have followed prophets of God throughout history. They mistook mental illness as a portal to another dimension. What was mental illness was perceived as scared knowledge. In the past the mentally ill were considered to be touched by God and to have access to knowledge that ordinary people could not attain. If they reported they saw Gods and angels their experiences were considered genuine. We now know that the mentally ill have not been touched by the Gods, they simply have an illness. If a man said that he was George Washington most would have no trouble deciding he was mentally ill but if he said he was a prophet God he would find followers. The fact that mental illness so easily integrates into religion is obvious even today. In another time period when the mentally were seen as simply touched by the Gods they could and did change the history of mankind.

The war on drugs is over. We lost. There is more drugs, more drug related crimes and more deaths than ever before. The term War on Drugs was coined June 18, 1971 after a Nixon press conference let the public know that US military was being sent abroad into foreign countries to stop drugs at their source. Drugs were declared “public enemy number one.” The war in Iraq and Afghanistan are often referred to as America longest wars but the war drugs has been going on for 45 years, much longer than the wars in the Middle East. We have thrown all kinds of money and resources at the problem but the problem is getting worse. Huntington has been ground zero to heroine epidemic. By December 11th of last year there had been 68 drug overdose deaths in Cabell County, the county Huntington is located in. Huntington is a small city of less than 50,000. We have a very active drug unit that does more than it share of drug busts. But despite an increased in drug bust the drug problems are getting worse. We are a college town, Marshall University that attracts a lot of young people who can’t wait to experiment with drugs.

Opioids were involved in 28,647 deaths in 2014 and overdoses have quadrupled since 2000. Huntington’s overdose death rate is six times higher than big cities like Cleveland. America jails more people than any country on earth and a good portion of those are for drug offences. It is quite obvious we are not going to arrest are way out of the drug problem. We have tried eradicating drug supplies in other countries or stopping at the border. Obama is making drug addiction a Federal priority and throwing more money at the problem. But no matter how many rehab projects we have the vast majority that go through rehab return to their former life style.

Addicts are taught in rehab that they have a disease not that they made certain life choices. If you get a disease like the flu you just have to ride it out. If drug addicts have disease than they are helpless to do anything about it. They are not responsible for their predicament in life. It is just a disease they were born with. This paradigm removes any personal responsibility from the drug addict for his actions and makes any cure near impossible.

What we are doing is not working and it is very expensive. Other countries have dealt with the same problem more effectively and less expensively. It is time we realize that we cannot save everyone from themselves. Decriminalization of drugs in Portugal for personal drug use led to a decrease in both addiction and drug related deaths. The bad boy syndrome plays a part in the drug problem as it gives a status to certain individuals that they are outlaws and getting away with something. Drugs are away of sticking their middle finger up at society as a whole. Removing that status removes an incentive to use drugs.

Most people think that illegal drugs are primarily responsible for our drug problems but the medical and pharmaceutical industries are responsible for a large proportion of our drug problems. We have a methadone clinic a few blocks away from City Hall. The participants are often under court order to participate and methadone is administered in an effort to get them off their drug of choice. The clinic applied for a permit to build a large parking lot and than violated the permit by making the lot bigger than permitted and eliminating the green spaces. When confronted they said the federal government mandated they have more parking than they were permitted and if they didn’t have it the clinic would have to close. I thought there is no way they needed that much parking but a early morning trip to location showed that a security guards were needed to direct all the incoming traffic. A good portion of those attending the clinic got addicted to drugs prescribed by irresponsible doctors and push by the greediest industry on the face of the earth, the American pharmaceutical industry. Big Pharma has paid hundreds of millions of dollars for pushing drugs they knew were highly addictive but assured doctors they were not. Addiction riddled Kentucky sued the makers of Oxycontin for a billion dollars the lawsuit was settled for $24 million on Dec 15 last year. Oxycontin was called Hillbilly Heroine. “The state accuses Purdue (the manufacture of OxyCotin) of misleading doctors and others into believing that OxyContin was difficult to abuse even though the company’s own data showed that crushing the pills was an effective way to turn the extended release pills into an abusable substance.” Similar lawsuits are also pending in Illinois and California.

This is what happens when the medical/pharmaceutical exists to make a large profit. They looked at the profit that illegal drug dealers make and say why not. Street level drug dealers don’t care how many of their customers die and neither do the pharmaceutical executives. There is one reason for company to exist and that is to make a profit and the bigger the profit the better. These companies are not in business to benefit mankind they are in business to make a profit and if they could addict every man, woman, and child in America to drugs they would. The American pharmaceutical is already one of the most profitable industry in the world if not the most profitable because of favorable laws that serve to block any competition but they want more and when they get more it is never enough.

Our bodies are complex chemical factories that manufacture literally thousands of chemicals and enzymes everyday. The body strives to keep a balance between all these chemicals. We all come equipped with a pleasure center in ours brains and we are rewarded with the release of chemicals in the brain. By natural design we are rewarded chemically in our brain for such simple actions as eating or sex. By making eating pleasurable it ensures we will seek out food and stay well nourished. By making sex pleasurable we ensure propagation of the species. Many drugs are cheap imitations of the drugs the body already manufactures and act on the same chemical receptors in the brain. Rats given a choice between cocaine or food will starve to death they just continue to stimulate the pleasure center in their brain. Drug users don’t need pleasurable activities if they can directly stimulate the pleasure center in their brain using street drugs. But there is always a price to be paid for breaking the rules once outside drugs are introduced the brain stops manufacturing those drugs in an effort to strike a balance. Once a drug doesn’t get his fix his body is badly out of balance and he craves the chemicals he was using. Like the rat they will use drugs until they die.

The other side of the coin is pain it is necessary that we feel pain in order to protect our bodies. If we accidentally put our hand in fire without the pain we would do severe damage to our hand. Likewise cutting vegetables you might cut fingers off without knowing it without the ability to feel pain. But we also feel pain from damage or deterioration of the body. The brain can and dose manufacture painkillers to help manage pain. Drugs mimic the actions of the natural painkillers but again you have a balance problem the presence of artificial painkillers will knock the bodies natural painkillers out of balance. How strong are the body’s natural painkillers? So strong that a carefully controlled study showed sham surgery was every bit as effective as the real surgery in relieving knee pain. Up until 2002 there were 650,000 “debridement” surgeries preformed each year in the United States. Debridment surgery was preformed on osteoarthritic knees, it involved inserting arthroscope and scraping down the cartilage and lavage and flushing it out. The sham surgery went through all the same steps and even an incision was made on the sham surgery subjects but the actual surgery was never done. It was a double blind study and those the subjects were assessed for ability to walk, level of pain, and use of the knees was assessed for two years. The sham surgery subjects did as well as those who actually had the surgery. It called the placebo effect. Many people think it is all in their head and it is all in their brain, which can control pain given a chance. Those who had sham surgery expected to get better and feel less pain. Their brain simply made more natural painkillers and they had less pain. The surgery was only effective because the subjects believed it would help them. Your body indeed is a wonderland but unfortunately it doesn’t come with an owner’s manual. Most teenagers could tell you more about the latest rock star than their body that has to change.

America drug problem will not have a top down solution it will have to be solved from the bottom up. In 1973 shortly after the war drugs began there were 328,670 arrests for drugs. By 2014 there were 1,561,231 arrests for drugs. If the arrests are an indictor of the size of our drug problem the problem is now five times worse. It is obvious we will never arrest our way out of the drug problem. In fact we may be even making it worse. To solve the drug problem we will have to shift the prevailing paradigm. The last several generation’s motto was sex drugs and rock and roll not necessarily in that order. The last several generations’ heroes have been rock stars who partied hardy and made no secret of their copious drug use. Many of their songs were thinly veiled odes to the pleasures of drug use. When the rock stars come to town they were worshipped like conquering heroes. To teenagers there were no counterbalance to the opinions if their heroes use drugs they are going to imitate them. The fat that several rock stars died during drug overdoses did not put a dent in the sex, drugs and rock and roll philosophy. Those rock stars that died simply became martyrs sacrificed on the alter of drug use.

In our society we spend nearly as much time trying to escape reality as we do dealing with it. Fictional books, movies, sports, concerts, and amusements parks are selling the same thing escape from reality. Drugs and alcohol are also selling escape from reality.
The trouble is “that every form of refuge has its price.”

The old TV commercials showing an egg and saying that is your brain and than showing a frying pan and saying this is drugs, then breaking the egg into the frying pan and frying the egg stating this is your brain on drugs maybe amusing but it does not provide any useful information to child trying to making a decision as to whether to party with friends or to go down a different path. Solving the drug problem will have to start in elementary schools by teaching the children with best available information about how their brain works and how drugs do long lasting or permanent damage. When I was schools we were shown films in grade school that portrayed drug users in a poor light something that might serve to counterbalance the romantic vision of drug use. The war on drugs will not be won by imprisoning over a million and half people a year most for simple possession (81%) it will come from making young minds understand how drugs work and the damage they do to mind and body.

Donald Trump’s remark last week that a woman that had an abortion should be punished drew fire from the pro-abortion forces, which was to be expected, but it also drew fire from the anti-abortion forces, which was surprising. If abortion is murder as the anti-abortion forces maintain than any woman getting an abortion is involved in a conspiracy to commit murder and as such she is guilty of murder and should receive life in prison or the death penalty. If the antiabortion forces are serious about stopping abortion they need to go after those who are soliciting murder. If a wife decided she did not want her husband any longer and hired somebody to murder him she would be guilty of murder by participating in a conspiracy to murder. The doctors are just paid hit men of a sort. The proximate cause of the abortion is the woman not the doctor why not punish the woman who is responsible for the abortion? Why would the antiabortion not be overjoyed with Trump’s position to go after the real criminals.

“March for Life, group that opposes abortion rights, said Trump’s statement was “completely out of touch with the pro-life movement and even more with women who have chosen such a sad thing as abortion.” Jeanne Mancini, president of March for Life Education and Defense Fund, said, No pro-lifer would ever want to punish a woman who had an abortion. This is against the very nature of what we are about.”

This would be like saying that the woman that hired the hit man to kill her husband is just the victim of the hit man. By the pro-life type of thinking no wives that hire hit men to kill their husband should never be punished after all it was just a sad choice to have their husband murdered. This shows how convoluted the antiabortionists thinking really is. They want to criminalize abortion but not punish those who are paying for the abortion. They need to decide whether they really want to make abortion a crime and put to death those who would be considered the masterminds of the conspiracy to committing “murder.” If they are not willing to put the real criminal to death maybe they should find a new hobby that doesn’t involve managing other people’s lives and let a woman control her own body.

The anti abortion movement was attempt to encode personal religious beliefs into law. Birth was the traditional accepted concept of when life began. Religious belief that a soul was the primary ingredient of life bought about the argument of when does the soul enters the body. The question was when does the soul fuse with the body at birth, at conception or some time in between? Most of the religious resolved the question to the view that the soul entered the body at conception. So the abortion argument is primarily an argument about religious beliefs. The soul is no more than religious fantasy concocted by generations of conmen. Physicists have been able to document the smallest particles in the universe but not one has been able to discover a soul. The antiabortion argument has often been hinged on the existence of the soul. When we start to make laws based on the invisible what other laws might we make?

The recent backlash from the antiabortion movement to Trumps argument that a woman getting an abortion should be punished shows how disjointed the antiabortionist’s reasoning is. If the mother had the child at 7 months and then paid the teenager up the street to kill it she would be considered guilty of murder as would the teenager. But if the same woman had an abortion at 7 months the antiabortionists believe it is wrong to punish the woman. I think the abortion question makes most of us uncomfortable and it will no doubt continue to do so. But it is inconsistent to belie that abortion is murder but those who are soliciting murder should not be punished. The antiabortion extremists murdered the doctors but not the women who are paying the doctors. It is hard for most of us to manage out own life without attempting to make someone else’s major life decisions through law.

Trump revealed his plan to make Mexico pay for the wall between Mexico and America yesterday. He would stop the transfer of money from Mexican immigrants to their families back home in Mexico using the antiterrorist laws. If Mexico agreed to pay for the Trump wall he would let the money transfers resume. Mexico receives $25 billion in money transfers each year from Mexican working abroad. It is unclear how much of that is from the United States or how much of it comes from illegal aliens.

Trump estimates the cost of his 1,000-mile long wall to be between $5 and $10 billion dollars. I doubt that a 1,000-mile chain link fence could be built for that figure let alone a concrete wall. The republicans were upset every time Obama used executive powers to accomplish something and now Trump is already planning to use executive powers to accomplish a major political objective. This provides a window into how trump plans to govern. He plans to govern on his own without the participation Congress. Trump is use to having things all his way and government by committee will be a new concept for him. Trump will have a hard time understanding that the Presidency is only one branch of a three-branch government. Government is completely different animal than the private sector and individual can accomplish a lot in the private sector but in government it takes a coalition.

Using anti-terrorist laws that were intended to fight terrorism, on an ally is a bad idea. The wall in itself is a bad idea as two weeks after it is built there will be more tunnels under it then mole hills. In fact the wall will no doubt be built over all the existing tunnels that are in service now. You could see how fast a tunnel was built once a drug king pin was imprisoned. Trump would go to war with the world for a bad idea.

It is no surprise that Mississippi the poster child of bigotry during the civil rights movement would embrace the new religious bigotry. In Mississippi during the 60s you could murder people on public streets and jury of your peers would find you innocent as long as the victim was black or a civil rights worker. Murders were heroes in Mississippi and were only finally bought to justice by Federal prosecution for civil rights violations. The new religious bigotry laws will warm the heart of every bigot in Mississippi. It will bring back sweet memories of the 60s when restaurants, hotels and other proudly displayed signs saying no blacks served here. The old signs can now be reused by simply crossing out the word black and replacing with homosexuals.

Federal laws had to be passed to stop a hundred years of discrimination because discrimination was encoded into state and local laws. Now discrimination is rearing its ugly head again on a state and local level. To discriminate all you need is an in group and an out group, skin color, sexual orientation, religion or some other trivial difference. Typically it is the minorities that are the victims of discrimination and the Christians would do well to remember this as Christianity continues to decline in America. Only 17% of Americans now attend weekly church services and the bigotry and the hate pouring fourth from the pulpit is a large factor as well as the effort to make Christianity a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican party. The preaching of hate and discrimination has put church attendance in a tailspin. Hate speech was not attractive coming from the KKK and it is less attractive coming from churches and statehouses. Every superhero needs a super villains to justify their existence and the Christian have chosen vilify their sons, their daughters, their brothers and their sisters, their fathers, and their mothers.

Imagine the shoe on the other foot, it is 2036 and regular church attendance continued to fall and only 5% of Americans regularly attend Christian services now. A family leaving church services stops at a restaurant after church. A man comes up to the family and says didn’t you see the sign? No Christians are served in this establishment. We find your ignorance and bigotry appalling. If we served you we would lose other customers who don’t want to be around your ignorance. You are a bad influence on our children. The family then stopped at a gas station where they were again refused service because the owner was Muslim and objected to Christian teaching as heresy. The family then went to a grocery store and were met with the same sign “No Christians” they objected and said their children were hungry the owner said if they would go to the backdoor he would sell them a few items. The family then stopped at a bakery where the owner was obviously gay and he served them but asked wasn’t it against their religion to eat in his establishment?

Could it happen? Look at Ireland where the Catholics and the Protestants fought years because of the difference in religious dogma. The Christian religion is a fraud built on a fraud like the Wizard Oz, full of sound and fury but when the curtain is pulled back there is just a little old man and his fantasies.

Do we really want to legalize discrimination of any sorts? The Republicans have championed bills to legalize discrimination in several states. Of course they label their vicious discriminations bills “Religious Freedom Bills.” The bills have nothing to do with religious freedom and everything to do with legalized discrimination. WV had it own religious freedom bill introduced into the state legislature. The WV Religious Rights Restoration Bill was amended to extend the protection to the LGBT community and was promptly killed by the Republican Senate 27-7.

Religion is about philosophy and every day someone is starting a new religion. Some religions teach that dancing is wrong and do not allow their members to dance. Should their religious freedom allow them to demand that the Prom be cancelled because “it is against their religious teaching?” This is the core of their argument with gays, “it is against their religion.” After all the purpose of Religion is to establish “God’s Kingdom on Earth.” The very existence of a secular government is against religion. God and only God should rule the earth. If the religious right had their way America would be transformed into a Christian caliphate.

At one point in history Christianity was a co-governor in many countries as powerful as the government until it shattered like glass into thousands of competing cults. The Christian right fought had to stop gay marriage and lost. The wave of religion freedom bills across America are simply a way to retaliate and a way to stigmatize homosexuality. In the last century the medical community believed that homosexuality was something that could be cured but further study showed that it was simply a normal reoccurring variance in humans. Efforts to cure homosexuality in legitimate medical practices ceased in the last century. A situation comedy on television Tuesday made fun of the gay camps they send teenagers to cure them. As his grandmother threatened to send him to a gay camp he could not help to envision a whole camp full of people just like himself.

As ignorance is replaced with knowledge it is hard for the ignorant to let go. Neuroscientists have discovered what are called grandmother neurons. When Bill Clinton was president one grandmother neuron might have been all that was needed to recognize his face. They also believe that some opinions might be encoded in grandmother neurons and once they are encoded they may be very difficult to change this might why some opinions are so difficult to change. Religion that is repeated over and over again is likely stored in single cell units that are easily recalled and stored in the limbic system. These cells are extremely resistant to change. It should be the Christian who were sent to camps to have them deprogrammed they are the ones who are perverted.

In this morning paper was article listing the groups that didn’t like Trump, 7 in 10 people have an unfavorable view of Trump and only about 50% of Republicans supported Trump. One of Trumps most loyal voting blocks had been those without a college education and now even 55% of those have an unfavorable view of him. The groups who hold an unfavorable view of Trump include, men and women; both young and old: conservatives, moderates and liberals; and whites, Hispanics and blacks. One has to wonder who is left.

The question is if Trump is so uniformly disliked is who is voting for him and why? Trump has registered double digit wins in several states. There may be more people at the ballot voting against Cruz than for Trump an election often comes down to a choice between the lesser of two evils. Cruz is just one of those people you just instantly dislike, you can’t put your finger on it but he gives off bad vibes. It may be his body language but he is an unlikely candidate for president. The only choice the Republican voters have at this moment is Cruz or Trump.

At the Republican Convention party insiders will try to eliminate both Trump and Cruz and replace them with a “compromise candidate.” After a couple of rounds of votes at the Republican Convention without any candidate getting the required majority the delegates are free to vote for anyone. They are no longer bound to a candidate their state voted for. It will be let’s make a deal time and delegates will be looking for the best deal they can get for their vote, Federal jobs and appointments in the new administration are sought after bribes. It looks like the Republican Party is in a lose, lose situation with the nightmare scenario being that Trumps wins the election. The Republican insiders believe that if Trump actually became the President he would damage the Republican Party for far longer than the four years he was in office.

This has been a strange political season so far and promises to become even stranger. The Republicans started with 17 major candidates in the Presidential race. There were also minor candidates including one from WV Jack Fellure 83, was the Prohibition Party candidate in 2012. The Prohibition Party is the oldest third party in the United States it was founded in 1869. The Prohibition Party was active in both the 19th and 20th century and played a key role in Prohibition. The party only secured 518 votes in the 2012 election. I must admit I did not know Prohibition was still an issue in the Republican Party.

From Rick Perry to Rand Paul they fell to the wayside. This is the first time I can remember that there were too many candidates to get on a debate stage. The Republicans had to have a major and minor debate. They had to have both a major league and the minor league debates. Several of the candidates had been pushed as Presidential material for years. The big money and big machine political candidate Jeb Bush committed political suicide by defending his brother baby Bush’s legacy. It would have been much like Herbert Hoover’s brother running for election after the Great Depression and telling the public what a great job he did. Jeb never understood that because of baby Bush’s lies over a hundred thousand people died. ISIS was the gift baby Bush gave the world by destabilizing the Middle East. ISIS began in Iraq in a sea of hate during the Iraq War. Imagine having your family killed because of lies told by a foreign leader. Baby Bush called it “Shock and Awe” as Baghdad was lit up with powerful explosives. There is no refuge from missiles carrying thousands of pounds of explosives that come silently in the night. The only possible refuge is to retreat into the supernatural into the arms of God for protection and God may have said “vengeance is mine” but it is always carried out by the hand of man. Jeb never saw a thing wrong wit a thing his brother did, all he saw was a country united after 9/11 but that was a few months into baby Bush’s term in office before the lies and the second great depression. Jeb believed it was the country that went wrong not his brother. Jeb believed that baby Bush was just another victim of an evil press.

Since Mendel discovered genetics the argument has raged as to whether we are more a product of nature or nurture. Mendel worked with different color pea plants but we are all subject to the basic rules of genetics he discovered. There are those who would attribute all personality traits to nurture while conceding our physical traits are do to genetics but studies have shown that genetics plays a far greater role in our mental traits then most of us would like to admit. We know for instance that psychopathic traits run in families. The mental process in a psychopath is markedly different than normal. Criminality often has it roots in genetic make up. Studies of identical twins raised by different types of families show while one may be raised in a loving middle class family and another in an abusive family. The twin raised in the loving family will still exhibit the criminal behavior though it might not be as severe as the twin raised in the abusive family.

But what about other traits such as religious belief? Studies show that religious belief has a definitive genetic component, a gullibility gene no doubt. When religious belief is broken down into its component parts the biggest genetic influence is seen in personal devotion, that factors in how important is religious beliefs in your daily life? When you have a problem how often do you seek spiritual comfort? How often do you pray to God privately? These traits showed a significant genetic correlation of .29 in other words twins raised apart would be likely to both have a similar spiritual style.

Measure of religious conservatism showed almost little to no genetic correlation. Personal conservatism was assessed by questions like: Do you believe that God is a universal spirit that observes your actions and rewards or punishes you for them? Do you believe the bible is the actual literal word of God?

The discovery of genetic component in religious belief has important and terrifying ramifications in today’s world. We are facing a Muslim minority that is intent on taking over the world to impose their religious belief on others. Christianity has the same dream but is not as likely to use terrorism to achieve their goal other then on abortion clinics. A gene that provides escape from reality may not be unique, severely abused children can dissociate themselves from their bodies when they are abused. Escape from reality may have been a necessary survival skill in overcoming stress. But a pleasant escape from reality has become a motive for mass murder now. The fact that at least part of the population genetically predisposed to make believe leaves them open to manipulation.

Some have pointed to what is often referred to as the spirituality gene as proof of God’s existence. I still prefer to refer to it as the gullibility gene. Scientists now realize that every facet of our lives is strongly influenced by our genetic makeup. Our most closely held opinions may have genetic roots or at least were very strongly influenced by our genetic make up. Our self concepts would lead us to believe that our attitudes and opinions are an unbiased result of what we have learned about the world but the fact that there may be a genetic bias toward certain conclusions is an import discovery. Just the knowledge that we have a genetic bias may allow us to lessen their influence.

The brain sometimes has a problem distinguishing a real experience from an internally generated experience. Sometimes a dream or a drug-induced illusion can seem real. Religious experiences are egocentric and with a genetic bias toward belief they are transformed into “proof of God.“ “A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest.” If man is to survive he will have to come to term with the fact that in order to arrive at many of his closely held opinions he had to disregard a lot of the facts. If there are facts that don’t support your opinions you need to reevaluate those opinions to see if reason can overcome your genetic biases.

Just the fact that we know we have genetic biases will help to overcome them. I wonder how many Christians could read the book “The Christ Conspiracy” which seems to be a very accurate account of the historical record of biblical times without disregarding the entire book. Most would never even think about reading the book because if it is correct they don’t want to know. When someone wants to block any knowledge that would discredit their opinions you can see the genetic bias at work.

More than concrete and steel our world is constructed of opinions, both right, wrong and indifferent. If we build our civilizations on weak and shifting sand they will crumble. The fact that all God’s before the most recent reincarnations have proved to be no more than weak and shifting sand should teach us something. We now know that many among us have a genetic bias but biases can be overcome.

If one takes an honest look at the world today you would have to admit that religion is the number one problem facing the world today and it is not the number one solution it pretends to be. Religion has long been considered by it followers to be the springboard into the next dimension. To the religious this world is only a temporary stopping place before the leap home. Now that we know that belief in religion has a genetic component would it be ethical to treat religious extremists and their descendants with gene therapy? We know that it is very hard to deprogram someone who has been subject to brain washing for even short periods of time. Even deprogramming members of cults who have only been members a relative short period of time is difficult and most cults have a religious base. Religious brain washing is life long and perpetual and add to that a genetic component and we have major problem.

If we could turn off the genes that are involved in propensity to be religious would the person suddenly look at their religion to be ridiculous and only a conspiracy of conmen? In the studies of religion they found that there are the religious and the spiritual. You can be spiritual without being religious. Religion is associated with a rigid and dogmatic lifestyle while spiritual people acknowledge that they are but a part of a greater whole without being dependent on putting it into a historical context with fictional characters and events. Man has evolved not only in body but in mind, ideas and concepts also evolve. Is spirituality an evolved position over religion? In spirituality there is no need to fly the flag of a certain God or to march out on the battlefield to defend his honor. No need to spend years recruiting others into your religion, no need to establish God’s kingdom on earth.

The most abusive thing about religious is they want to force their beliefs on everyone else on the face of the earth. America has sent missionaries around the world to spread their lies never bothering to take a closer look at their “truth.” We know for certain that we all are a part of all that is. The elements that make up our bodies are billions of years old. We are indeed stardust. Our bodies are composed of billions of specialized cells that live, die and are replaced but each cell, each molecule and each atom is us and at the same time not us. What we are granted is the illusion of separateness our ego draws a boundary line around us. What religion strives to do is maintain the illusion of the individual boundary line beyond death and to deny the obvious universal truth that you were, are, and always will be part of all that is.