The Communist Origin of the Modern Conservative Movement VI

Man’s ego is boundless. He not only sees himself as the center of the known universe he believes that universe was created specifically for him. It was not man that created God it was his ego that created God. It was man’s sense of self-importance that created God it gave birth to all of man’s religions. In the bible and other religious text man’s ego dictates that man is God’s prized creation. We ask ourselves what is the purpose of life? Our ego tells us that surely we must have a great and noble purpose for our lives. As God’s creation we must be about God’s plan. Our ego is the spark that breathes life into God. Religions were created out of our need to be self-importance.

“We are utterly without purpose in the cosmos. We would like to think ourselves necessary, inevitable, ordained from all eternity. All religions, nearly all philosophies, and even part of science testify to the unwearying heroic effort of mankind desperately denying its own contingency. (random existence)

Jacques Monod

Our ego flatters us by telling us that we must have a divine purpose. That in creation we have a starring role that man would not be just a walk on. Our egos lie to us, when surveyed people will rate themselves as better drivers, better looking and smarter than average but if everybody is obviously not above average. The ego creates a feed back loop where once it creates a God to give itself purpose it sets up rituals and rules. Then the ego imagines a great and noble purpose. The Mormons imagine their great and noble purpose as molesting 14 year old girls and wives are like the stairway to heaven the more you have the higher your status in heaven. The Muslims imagine their great and noble purpose as destroying the World Trade Center. The ego takes a drink of imagination to satisfy its longing for purpose, than the egos imagination takes a long drink of imagination, than imagination takes the man.

In past religion has been forced to change to stay relevant in a changing world. Will religion chose to change or die out? If one could go back in a time machine to the first century one would not even be able to find Christianity, as the myth had not yet been reduced to writing. If one went back to the 1300s most people today would not get as big a thrill out of the witch burnings and torture as the locals did, of course there would be a few. Christians was forced by governments to stop burning witches but change they did. There are signs today that change is coming but that change will only come to the more progressive branches of Christianity.
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Secular humanistic philosophy strives to break the stranglehold that ancient myths have on much of the population. Some of the points of a humanistic philosophy are:

“The application of reason and science to the understanding of the universe and to solving the human problems

Deplore looking to the supernatural for human salvation

Democracy is the best protection against authoritarian elites and repressive governments

The separation of church and state

Supporting the disadvantaged and handicapped

Enjoying life here and now and developing our talents

Optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair

Learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance

The joy of life rather than guilt or sin

Love instead of hatred

Compassion over selfishness

Reason rather than blind faith or irrationality

Humanism as a realistic alternative to theologies of despair and of violence

Humanism as a source of personal significance and genuine satisfaction in the service of others.“

From the book “Did Man Create God”
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Some of these points are beginning to be adopted by reformed religions that are breaking the surly bonds of myth. The fundamentalist movement in America is primarily a backlash where man takes three steps forward and two steps back. At one time mythos ruled the know and even now in the minds of many logos takes a back seat to mythos but the major myths are losing ground.

In the concluding paragraph of his book “Did God Create Man” the author, David Comings, sees a future where reason will triumph over superstition but I think he is overly optimistic. He dose not believe that religion will go away but the difference between reason and superstition will be bridged by the religious accepting the fact that none of the religions are the word of any God but just provide metaphors for a moral life style. When it comes to the future many people tend to see what they want to see and avoid unpleasant implications. In my lifetime and Coming’s lifetime religion has changed and not for the better. In the 50s many churches taught that the biblical stories were indeed metaphors. I can remember coming home from church and questioning biblical stories and my Dad explaining that they were metaphors. But when presented with a choice many people flocked to the more radical fundamental churches that taught the Bible was the word of God and every word was true. The worldwide trend is not toward reason and away from superstition it is toward even more radical interpretations of religious texts. In this country the number of people who practice religion on a weekly bases has declined radically but those who do are more likely to belong to more extreme forms of religion. The mainline churches that taught that religion was metaphor saw major declines in members and the radical churches that taught the world was only 5,000 years old gained membership.

If you would have told someone in the 50s that one day a religious group would fly airplanes into the World Center and kill 3,000 for the glory of God no one would have believed it Even a fiction account of such an event would have been unbelievable. But America got a real good look at religion. Religion gives God’s self declared representatives on earth the right to dictate how everyone else’s on earth lives. A philosophy that directs one how to live is one thing, a philosophy that teaches its followers that they have not only the right but the responsibility to tell others how to live is dangerous at best. The trend in this country is not toward reason but toward even more extreme superstitions. Even though the measure of weekly church attendance is trending downward the sphere of influence is expanding and those who profess more extreme religious views are increasing but most disturbing trend is an exponential increase in political activity.

We call them fairy tales. They are passed from generation to generation. They cross cultures and borders with ease. If you ask a four year old if Snow White was real person they would tell you most assuredly that she was. Most people realize that the first 99,999 Gods created by man were every bit as fictional as Snow White, but like the four year old believes, they believe the last God created was the real McCoy.

If a look at past Gods shows they share the same stories and the same traits would it make people suspect that the bible is little more than plagiarism? There is now substantial evidence that stories in the bible predate the bible by thousands of years. If the bible stories are not original, and they are not, it casts doubt on the veracity of the bible. Virgin births of Gods were common in biblical times. The virgin birth of Jesus was not an original concept. Among the Gods who were born of a virgin;
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“Krishna was born of the virgin Devaki on December 25th,”

“Horus was born of the virgin Isis-Meri on December 25th , in a cave/manger with his birth being announced by a star in the East and attended by three wise men.”

And so many more virgin births I don’t have the space to list them.

From the book “The Christ Conspiracy” by Acharya S.

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Does the tale start to sound familiar? What are the chances of the key story elements being the same 22,000 years before the birth of Christ figure? And the similarities continue.
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“Horus had twelve disciples’

“He performed miracles, exorcized demons and raised El-Azarus from the dead.”
“Horus walked on water”
“He was crucified between to thieves, buried for three days in tomb, and was resurrected.”
“Hours was called KRST or the “Anointed One””
_______________________________________________________The term Christ meant the Anointed One and was extremely popular in biblical times. Any holy man was considered the Anointed One. The writer of the bible could not come up with one single original idea. If the bible is the word of God, God is plagiarist.

The poppy Family once sang, “It is a strange, strange world isn’t it Master Jack?” That is indeed true, the human mind can and does exclude all kinds of information when it wants to continue to support a “belief.” Most people are capable of seeking out the best available information and making a decision based on that information. If new information comes to light they will reassess their position and change it if a preponderance of evidence shows they were wrong. But beliefs are the strange, strange part of the world. No amount of contrary information is ever enough to change a belief.

Where there is free flow of information in most fields and people are encouraged to learn as much as possible but belief systems are deliberately designed to exclude any opposing information. Our eyes see only a portion of the light spectrum and our ears only hear only a fraction of the sound spectrum by design. The spiritual brain, if there is indeed is a portion of our brain that is subject to spirit ideation, has no interest in facts or information to the contrary. This section of the brain is deliberately designed like the eyes and ears, to exclude information. Where the brain as a whole thrives on information the spiritual brain peers out at the world from a narrow slit instead of a picture window. The spiritual brain blocks the light of knowledge and replaces it with fool’s gold.

It is like being on the Titanic and sighting the ice burg and then denying its there.

Germany has been sparred the major terrorist attacks that the United States, England, and France have endured but that may be changing. It had its third knife attack on “unbelievers” yesterday. Religion throughout history have always believed the best way to deal with “unbeliever” is to kill them. The frightening part is that the leaders of religious organization believe that they have not only the right but that they also have the responsibility to spread religion at the point of a knife or a gun. When anyone points out that their religion is absolute nonsense they become frustrated and enraged. They use killing as a recruiting technique those that are not killed will at least give lip service to believing in what ever religion the thugs are pushing and then the religious thugs will point to the number of followers as proof positive of the divine source of their religion.

In any war there are usually two sides in uniform that attack each other but in a religious war it is brother against brother and children against their parents. In Germany it was not a foreigner who attacked Germany citizens it was a German national who yelled God is greatest, and unbeliever at his victims as he stabbed them. ISIS of course had solicited attacks on social media. Countries in past tended to have national religions or at least a strong primary religion but the world is changing and people that emigrate now no longer adopt the religion of the country they emigrate to but for the most part keep their native religion. One of the original purposes of religion was used to unite a tribe or a country behind a supernatural force. Freedom of religion changed this and people were free to believe in whatever God they could imagine. In America freedom of religion effectively meant you could belong to whatever brand of Christianity you wanted as long as you were Christian. Other religions were treated as minorities that need not even be acknowledged. The Founding Fathers never anticipated that foreign religions might one-day rival Christianity.

The tonsils and the appendix no longer serve a useful purpose even though at one time they served a useful purpose. The spiritual mind might have served a useful purpose at one time uniting a tribe and giving them supernatural courage and strength because they actually believed they were immortal and would be richly rewarded with 21 virgins for their service. This spiritual mind offered survival advantages for desert tribes 2,000 years ago attacking a neighboring tribe. A tribe without the belief that they were immortal would not fight with as much conviction and courage because they realized that there were not 21 virgins waiting for them just a cold grave. Escaping the battle might have been the best alternative. Those who were most susceptible to supernatural belief may have been most likely to survive in constant conflict and reproduce. The spiritual portion of the mind had to serve a useful purpose at one time like the tonsils and appendix and like the placebo effect of courage in battle may have been it purpose. Now it takes little courage to push a button a world away and wipe out the population of a country but believing that your God wants you to push the button to kill the unbelievers is quite another. It is quite possible that the spiritual mind could be surgically removed just like the tonsils or appendix and if mankind is to survive we must realize that we each carry genetic baggage, like a hoarder, we no longer need.

Christianity is one of the biggest frauds ever perpetuated on mankind. Almost every thing that modern Christians worship was stolen from some earlier religion. There were so many virgins giving birth to Gods it would be like innocent men found in prison, according to prison inmates they are all innocent. There is a good reason unmarried women who had children would claim to be a virgin during biblical times. She was likely to be stoned to death if she had admitted having sex before marriage. The virgin gives birth to a God story is so common to religions it is almost as common as the line “Once upon a time” is to fairy tales. The religious stories begin that, “Once upon a time a virgin gave birth to a God.”

The gods Krishna, Mithra, Horus, Buddha, Salivahana, Attis, Dionysus, and Zoroaster were all born of virgins. Why? Sex and religion have always had a rocky relationship. Sex unquestionably ties man to the animal kingdom. The Catholic concept of children being born with original sin originates with sex. We are all born of original sin, a product of this disgusting animal like behavior (at least if you are not participating and often clergy was not). No God worth his salt could ever be born of this disgusting act. Mankind prides himself because he has risen above most of the animal kingdom behavior but man will always be conflicted over his sexual desires and actions. Religion are even far more conflicted trying to control what is impossible to control but at least they can cleanse their God of original sin by virgin birth. The virgin birth of Gods tell us less about religion and more about our innate shame born of sexual activity. No God should ever bare the shame of original sin; the stain could never be washed out of his Godly image.

Christianity is a field that most people in America study but really don’t want to know too much about it. In any field of study understanding the origin of that field is one of the most important aspects. Christianity for the most part acts as if it began with the birth of the mythical Christ figure. By adopting this point in time they can ignore all the other religions that gave birth to Christianity. Why would they want to ignore all the religions that so obviously contributed to the story of Christ? The same reason that light skin blacks would try to pass as white in the old South. They did not want people to connect them to their ancestors. If most people connected Christianity to the other religions that are that are now considered mythology this would make Christianity mythology also. If the mother and father of Christianity were in fact mythological then it follows that Christianity is also mythology. Like the light skinned blacks in the old South Christianity has been passing as the “truth.” There is a reason why light skinned blacks in the old South never took their friends to meet their parents, the masquerade would end. Christianity will always pretend that it was conceived in an immaculate conception free from original sin but we know that is a lie at least some of the stories the bible claims are original can be traced back 100 thousand years to the very beginning of civilizations.

Christianity is like magician it depends on the art of misdirection. Once you know how a magician magic trick is done the illusion is gone forever. Religions were not conceived in an immaculate conception they were conceived in a seething caldron of other older religions. Religion is like Henry Ford first Model T for a hundred years thousand of other people have improved it but it is still a car. Religion has been improved by 100s of thousands of people since time began but it is still mythology and mythology will never become the “truth.” DNA can be used to trace a persons ancestors and there is a DNA for religions also that allows to trace the ancestors of religion. DNA direct the construction of our bodies but even a small sample allows to trace our ancestors. The ideas and stories in a religion can be traced to their source just as DNA can show who you are related to.

In our society most jobs require you to show that you are qualified for that job but preachers and politicians are an exception. The only two qualifications to hold the mayor’s job in Huntington are that you be 25 years old and live in the city when you are elected. In the year 2,000 we elected a 25-year- old college student who had never held a full time job in his life because the sitting mayor was so unpopular. One day you are a college student the next you are a CEO of a $40 million dollar corporation. Even to be president you must be 35-years old and a natural born citizen and be a resident for 14 years. There are no qualifications required to be a preacher, you can simply start your own church if no one will hire you. Just start thumping your bible and people will show up to listen.

Professional like doctors and lawyers are required in addition to their schooling they are required to pass a test to show they working understanding of their field of specialty. Preachers can buy a degree over the Internet and take control of peoples lives. The incompetent can and do create disasters. Catholic priests are at least required to get an education. A priest must get a bachelors degree, than the seminary program and a master degree is optional. Some preachers would be lucky to have a high school education. The less educated the preacher the more likely he is to push the fundamentalist belief system, that the earth is 4,000 years old and the bible is the unerring word of God. Though there are some educated preachers in the movement most are just ignorant with little understanding of any basic science. There is a reason that the Catholic Church never got on the fundamentalist bandwagon and that reason is that they require a college for their clergy.

The fundamentalist movement is what is causing the problems in both the Middle East and America. To take a book that is 2,000 years old and say that it is an absolute guide to life today is absurd. The government will never be able to make preachers be licensed like lawyers and doctors. They will never be able to make them demonstrate they have enough knowledge to meddle in people’s lives because of Freedom of religion clause. A marriage councilor is required to be trained but many uneducated preachers council married couples in crisis all the time with no training. Here, God says drink the Kool-aide

What does it take to be considered an expert in biblical matters? A bible, anyone with a bible and attitude can be a preacher. In a society a preacher is considered a professional on the same level as a doctor or a lawyer but they should be considered on the same level as a witch doctor. For way too long preachers have spread their bigotry and ignorance to the undereducated. One need only look at the Middle East to see what a fundamentalist religious movement can do to a civilization. At one time the civilization in Middle East revered knowledge and was one of the most advanced on the face of the earth. The origin of man may be traced to Africa but origin of civilization can be traced to the Middle East. The Middle East has long been considered the cradle of civilization and by rights should be the most advanced civilization on earth and it once was.

In the Middle East a war took place between logos (knowledge) and mythos and mythos won. For a civilization to survive mythos must be relegated to its proper place. All societies have generated myths and many share common elements and the reason they share common elements is they have common DNA handed down from their parent religions. When mythos is elevated to the level off truth logos is endangered.

The fundamentalist movement in America has gained strength over the last 50 years. Could our civilization be destroyed by belief that mythos is true? Could what happened in the Middle East happen here? Could we end up with a society where the religious ignorant dictated ever aspect of our lives? From minute details of how we dress to dictating biblical era laws. It has already happened in the cradle of civilization and the direction of religion in America has been from the mundane to the more extreme.

What is the difference between an educated preacher and an ignorant preacher? None to their congregation the ignorant preacher is camouflaged behind the respectability of the position. The preacher is a professional and given the respect shown to that position. This allows the ignorant preacher a counterfeit legitimacy for his personal prejudices and ignorance.

Ministers are granted professional status in our society along with doctors and lawyers but doctors and lawyers must face malpractice suits if they do not meet a standard of competence and do harm to their clients. A preacher who had no qualifications to council a married couple can do more harm than good but it unlikely that the minister would ever be successful sued for malpractice. To hold the position of minister in America the preachers are not required to have any standard of education though some sects may require some form of education. A couple goes to a preacher for marriage counseling and the preacher listens carefully to the wife’s complaints about her husbands gambling. He tells the wife that the bible says that the man is head of the household and as such makes all the financial decisions. The man continues to gamble and the family loses everything. If a marriage councilor had advised that the man was head of the household and therefore was entitled make all of the financial decisions the councilor would open themselves up for a malpractice suit.

The professional status afforded to preachers in our society gives them an aura of expertise and authority that most don’t possess. In the 50s preachers were content to just run their congregations but with the birth of the Moral Majority in 1979 the Christian right preachers began to take the professional status afforded them seriously and decided they should no longer just run their congregation but the country as a whole. In recent years at least two serious republican presidential candidates have been preachers, Pat Robertson and Mike Huckabee.

It is surprising how people are subject to authority. We think of authority as being an imposing force but in fact things as simple as signs posses authority. If you put a sign in a store directing people in one direction the vast majority will go in the direction the sign points. The air pressure warning lights on newer cars come on when a tire is only a few pounds low in new cars but my wife will not drive the car until the tires are aired up and the light is off even though driving the car for a few days would not have hurt anything. The light has authority over the person driving the car. People have absolutely no idea how often and easily they submit to authority. On one of the true crime programs on Discovery ID they showed the actual prosecution of licensed massage therapist. A woman went in for a massage at reputable massage establishment and the therapist after doing the massage began to massage her vagina. When she objected he told her to lie back down and continued to massage her vagina for twenty minutes. When prosecutors asked her why she didn’t leave she could only cry. When the defense attorney asked her if she had not fought off unwanted advances before she was at a loss. The massage therapist had authority to touch her body and when he took it a step further she submitted to his authority. The massage therapist took a plea bargain after the cop who investigated the case was asked by the defense attorney why no rape kit was done. The cop explained that there was no crime committed. The prosecutors had instructed the cop not to say that before the trail as that decision was not up to him but instead was for the jury to decide.

What we see by that case is how we willing people grant others authority over them. If the same woman had encountered the same man on the street and he grabbed her she would have reacted immediately to stop him. She submitted because she had already surrendered the authority to touch most of her body. People do this with preachers they surrender authority to preacher in one area of their life and then it is easier to surrender authority in other areas. If the preachers is incompetent or malicious there is going to be a problem.

In our daily lives we are all subject to authority from a stop sign to a red light. When we encounter a red light at three o’clock in the morning with no traffic we will still stop because the light has the power of authority. We could come to a stop check for traffic and go through the light safely but we don’t. Of course we know that an unseen police car could back up the red light’s authority with a ticket but even that chance is slight. The woman went in for a massage had not only granted the therapist the authority to massage 90% of her body but she was paying a licensed massage therapist in a reputable establishment. The licensed therapist had the authority of his education and license he also had established control of the massage. He had control of 90% of her body and taking control of the rest of her body was easy. When he started touching her he and she went to get up, he simply told her to lie back down and she did. When she later reported the attack to the police she had no good explanation as to why she let it go on for twenty minutes without even telling him to stop. She was much like the proverbially frog placed in a pan of water warmed slowly. Had the frog been put in boiling water it would have jumped out. I don’t think the woman even when she reached court understood her own lack of reaction and that bothered her as much as the actions of the massage therapist.

We all submit to authority on a daily bases, we submit to authority so often we don’t realize when we are doing it. Even a simple sign in the coffee room to pay for the coffee works. Add a set of eyes to sign and it is more effective. From signs to bosses, authority and how we react to it is a major component in our lives. Those who refuse to acknowledge authority’s power over them often end up spending their life in a cage where even more authority is exerted over their lives. Most people respect authority for a good reason but we must realize that we sometimes we let other exercise authority over us when we should not let them.

Preachers are respected authority figures in our society as well as societies around the world. They not only tell people how to live they are expected to tell people how to live as part of their job description. Preachers’ authority does not rise to the power of law but like the massage therapist they have established authority over their congregation. We are all still horrified at the image of the world Trade Center tower collapsing but we were just witnessing the power of authority. But the terrorists went willing to their death no one held a gun to their head and they could have aborted at any time.

We all say, no it could not happen to me but when we say that we have to acknowledge that we already submit to a good deal of authority each day. The most famous experiment on authority came after Nazi Germany when Stanley Milgam set up an experiment at Yale University. The subject was told they were doing an experiment on learning and that they were to administer a shock to a subject in another room if they got the answer wrong. The shocks were to be increased each time the subject got a wrong answer. The subject in the other room was an actor and as the shocks increased in voltage he would scream in agony but if the subject of the experiment was told to continue shock the actor until he “died.” A full 65% continued shocking the other subject administering a full 450 volts until they believed the subject in the other room died because they were told to by an authority figure. Remember this was just an experiment and subjects were perfectly willing to kill if told to do so by an authority figure. In light of Milgram’s experiment the woman continuing to lay on massage therapist’s table for 20 while she is being molested seems understandable, at least she wasn’t willing to kill someone.

The fact that preachers are automatically imbued with authority in our society and virtually anyone can be a preacher with little to no educations should scare the life out of all of us.

The vast majority of us are preprogrammed to be susceptible to authority. Authority is what makes it possible for mankind to live in large groups. In a tribe if everyone was free to do as they wished they would likely perish. When attacked by another tribe if some men refused to fight they would likely loose. Authority provides the structure for society, the steel skeleton that societies are built around. Authority lets each member of society know what is expected of them and sets rules to live by. Like other traits selected by evolution being subject to authority had survival value. Those who could not get along in a group were less likely to survive on their own. Cohesive groups got along because members could defer the right amount to authority while still maintaining their individuality.

The woman getting the therapeutic massage is an example of someone who deferred too much to authority. In our society some authority carries the force of law while we voluntarily submit to the authority of the workplace, school, country club, or church. In order for these institutions to exist they must have rules and a way to enforce those rules. Authority even exists in groups of friends or clicks. One person often is the de facto leader of the group. He or she establishes dominance and the others defer to their authority. A recent series on Discovery ID called “Murder Among Friends” showed a number of cases where a group of teenage friends would murder one of the group under the influence of authority of the leader. They committed the most horrific murders with ease. Last century lynching were common in one incidence a black man had been lynched by a crowd and when his very pregnant wife protested she was lynched along side of him, her belly was cut open and when the fetus hit the ground one of the crowd used their heel to crush its head. A large crowd in Chicago gathered to lynch a black man than burned his body. Afterwards they cut the fingers off of the corpse and gave them to children as souvenirs. These large crowds were under the influence of a few people who were able to gain authority over the crowd. Most of those in the lynch mob would never do anything like that on their own.

Another famous experiment that demonstrated the effect of authority was carried out at Stanford University. The experiment involved setting up a jail. The volunteers were randomly divided up into prisoners or guards. The prisoners were arrested at their dorm rooms and taken to the experimental jail by the Sheriff Department. When they reached the jail the voluntary guards took control. Those volunteers that had randomly became guards soon became abusive to the prisoners. They assumed the authority of the roles they were playing and soon they had broken some of the volunteer prisoners who asked to leave. The experiment had to be stopped after six days because the abuse had become so bad. The Office of Naval Research funded the experiment to find cause of conflict between military guards and prisoners. In this case the authority was in the structure of the institution since volunteer prisoners and guards were chosen at random.

America has been in decline for the last half century and this parallels the rise of religious influence in the political arena. Religious groups began to assert their authority over the political activity and voting patterns of their members. Their myopic focus on only a few issues has made them a pawn used by the rich to cut their taxes 70%. Just as the woman getting the massage we should realize when people are exerting more authority over us than they should actually have.

When it comes to authority the most powerful authority figure in the world for those who believe in him is God. Followers of religions when they must resolve a conflict between secular law and God’s law will always sight God as the higher authority. Is it any wonder that the world now has more religious inspired terrorism than any other point in history? God may be the higher authority but it is man who decides what God’s will actually is.

In the Middle East a group of young men were called together and told by a respected religious leader that God had a special mission for them. God wants them to destroy the infidel’s World Trade Center and Pentagon. Because they see themselves as obedient servants of God they never question the morality of their actions or even their own will to live. The massage therapist says lay back down and the woman does. Authority surrounds us and a good deal of the actions of ourselves and others are result of that authority. We have a responsibility to question authority and not just blindly act. Conmen often pretend to be an authority figures because they know that people will obey authority. You get a call telling you that you owe $1,000 in income tax and you need to pay it now or be arrested. West Virginia was smothered with these calls last spring and no doubt many paid the false bills with their credit card. I received three such calls and just hung up. The fact is you do not have to have real authority you just have to act as if you do.

This is the problem with creating an ultimate authority figure like God. The income tax scam artists don’t work for the IRS but they derive their authority from saying they do. The world is full of people who claim to derive their authority from whatever God they chose to believe in but do they? Or are they like the income tax scam artists using the authority of God to benefit themselves.

We are all subject to authority in our daily lives to one degree or another. If a simple sign directing us to the right instead of the left when entering a store works we have to realize that we respond almost unconsciously to authority. There are even ways to enhance the authority of signs. In an experiment in a company’s break room coffee was self serve and payment was on the honor system. A sign was placed on the wall giving the price of a cup of coffee. Some did not pay for their coffee but when the sign was modified and a pair of eyes were added to the sign the number of people paying for the coffee went up significantly. When the eyes were removed from the sign and replaced with flowers the number of people paying dropped. Even though there were no cameras and only the eyes on the sign the authority of the sign increased significantly when the eyes were on the sign.

We recently had case where a man had defrauded a local hotel out of thousands of dollars. When he checked into the hotel he claimed to be a doctor working for a local hospital. He told them that the hospital would pay for his room. After a few months with the bill unpaid the hotel checked with the hospital to see why the bill was not paid. They were told that the hospital knew of no such doctor and that he did not work for them. The man was arrested and when asked why he did it he replied, “that he was divorced and needed a place to stay.” A doctor has a good deal of authority and when he told the hotel clerk that the hospital was paying the clerks never questioned his authority. Had he been a simple consultant for a business and told them the business would pay his bill it is likely that they would have confirmed it. This man had pulled similar scams in other places. There was a disparity of authority between the hotel clerk and the man posing as a doctor but it was not real. The clerk routinely asserted authority over other customers checking their method of payment but not so the doctor and you can bet the man posing as a doctor had mastered the art of projecting authority. If questioned he would have reacted with an angry air of authority.

This is the problem with the creation of the ultimate authority figure. The conman needed the hospital to pull the scam off even though he did not have their permission to use them in the scam. The conman not only asserted the authority of the doctor he invoked the authority of the hospital and its good name and reputation in community to scam the hotel. The conman knew he could not just walk in a pull a scam under the authority of his own name. Just as the conman knows he could not pull the scam off on his own authority the terrorist leaders knew they could not pull off the 9/11 attacks without invoking an authority much higher than themselves. The hotel scam worked for the conman several times he just stayed to long this time.

Preachers work just like conmen they rely on sighting the will of a higher power to enhance their chances of manipulating people to carry out what they believe to be the “will of God.” When you create the ultimate authority figure that is powerless to voice its own will you create a dangerous vacuum that will attract all matter of dangerous degenerates who will be more than willing to use the ultimate authority to achieve their own ends. The terrorists need God just as the conman needed the authority of the hospital. The greatest authority figure in universe is mute and needs others to give voice to his will.

The republican business model has come to the Internet. Companies are looted; service employees are laid off all in an effort to maximize profit. This won’t work in a competitive situation but in government and utilities, service can cut close to the point of non-existence. The local phone company was one of the most reliable but when the new phone company took over someone else’s phone rang in my house and our calls went to their house. It took two weeks before a service person came out. In 70s my house phone stopped working the repairman was there within the hour and located the problem and fixed it. The carpet installers cut the phone line. The phone company in this area was sold a few years ago and the next buyer was determined to make it more profitable by “cutting out the fat.” Of course the fat was the service personal that were not busy all the time. If you have enough people to handle ordinary problems in a day you can cut back to a two-week timetable. The people cut our will make the bottom line bigger. A power outage in the winter for 80-year-old customer took 30 days to restore power in the middle winter a few years ago. Local electric service personal were cut by a factor of 10. So what do you do during a major winter storm? You get power crews from California it will take a few weeks but what are customers going do you have an absolute monopoly. The power company had decided to move all of the local repair trucks out of state. In 35 years I had never experienced a power outage over 12 hours but after a summer storm the power was out a full week with the temperature at 103 degrees. The power crews had been cut back radically and out of town crews are not familiar with the local area.

At one time companies believed they had a responsibility to their customers but as the republican philosophy was spread across college campuses in the 80s we produced a generation that believes only a profit is important. It is a shortsighted, self-centered philosophy and no one personifies it more that Donald Trump. Our quality of life has declined over the last 30 years but remember the company will take care of you they will put you at the top of the list for repairs next month.

In Plato’s allegory of the cave we find prisoners who have lived all their lives chained to a cave wall facing the wall. A fire behind them projects shadows on the cave wall. These shadows are the prisoner’s only experience of reality. We are all like the prisoners except we experience reality through our senses instead of shadows on a cave wall. We all know shadows are easily distorted. Not only are our senses involved but our brains are involved in interpreting what are senses report. Where we are different from Plato’s prisoners is that our brains are quite capable of generating images on their own the cave wall could not. All of us have experienced vivid and detailed dreams, some that we might mistake for reality if we didn’t know we were sleeping. This is not the only situation where the brain is capable of generating its own images independent of the senses. One that comes to mind is the classic case where a man in the desert sees a mirage. Epileptic seizures, hallucinogenic drugs and certain mental illnesses can provide what seems to the individual to be valid experiences independent of their senses.

So the dilemma is how to tell when we are chained to the cave wall looking at distorted shadows and when we are actual looking at reality. We are limited as individuals by a relative short life span and we will only see a small portion of the earth in our lifetime so we are indeed worse off than Plato’s prisoners because we often must depend on what others tell us about the shadows on the wall. In fact many of the people who reported about the shadows on the wall are long dead and we have only their report. If person feels that an experience is real he will report it as such and others will depend on the report.

Mohamed was a respected normal businessman in Mecca when he had what is believed to be an epileptic seizure. He believes that he is hugged by angel Gabriel and forced to read a message from God. When Mohamed announced he was God’s spokesman the citizens of Mecca made fun of him and put slimy camel fetus down his neck when he was praying. In other words those that knew him made fun of him like they would any other mentally ill person. Mohamed took his religion on the road where it found a following from extend family members and the lower class. Mohamed formed an army and started killing everyone in sight. He returned to Mecca to kill those that made light of him and a major world religion is formed from a distorted shadow on a cave wall.

How many people believe that they are a special messenger of God at some point in their life? An Internet search retuned no relevant results so evidently it is not being tracked. This might be a statistic that we don’t want to know. What we do know is that it is not uncommon in our society. In fact one of the key questions used to access someone sanity is, “Do you believe that you are God or special messenger of God?” Answering yes to that question would be people like David Koresh and Jim Jones along with many others. Ask yourself why no great religions have been founded in well over a thousand years? Man’s knowledge and understanding of mental illness has advanced radically. In biblical times someone showing the signs of mental illness was considered special with access to special information. They were considered “touched by the Gods.”

If Mohamed was born today and told people that the angel Gabriel gave him a bear hug and forced him to read a message from God his family would take him to a mental health facility for treatment. Mohamed was born in 570 into a changing world. His friends and associates treated his announcement that he was God’s special messenger just like they treated others who made unfounded statements. They made fun of him and treated him with disdain. Mecca was a city and more advanced than the countryside. Mohamed was able to step back in time. When Mohammed found out he was about to be murdered he fled to Medina an isolated city where he was not considered mad but a messenger of God. The reason that a new major religion has not been founded in the last 1300 years is not that there is a lack of prophets but that there is a better understanding of mental illness. The residents of Mecca got it right Mohammed had gone mad but Mohamed got his revenge by returning with his army and killings his former friends and associates. In history might makes right because it is the mighty, good or bad, who write the history. Fear spread the seeds of the Muslim religion across the Middle East not so much the fear of God as the fear of the sword.

Who are these great religious leaders that are worshiped through out the world? Who are they really? Should we judge them as other men? Or does their celebrity place them above the judgment of ordinary men? If today we had a man that had slaughtered or ordered the slaughter of thousands of children and women we could not execute him fast enough at least in Texas. The bible just calls him Moses. Is murdering women and children a virtue? Do those women and children have no value? Had they committed a great sin? Or was just another human being exercising the power of life and death because he could? Was it a different time? Sure, but it wasn’t a different religion it was the same morality. “Thou shall not kill” except when it benefits you or for recreation. Moses must be judged by the same standards we judge other human beings. But it is more important that the religion be judged by Moses’ actions. Today only a serial killer could order the death of innocent women and children. Moses is held up as a role model someone to be emulated by religious followers. Would we really want a bunch Christian running around killing innocent women and children today? They say religion is all about morality and setting a moral example. But when the tough moral questions are asked they have no answer other than it was a different time. If morality is different because it was a different time should we not only leave the morality in past but the religion that justified that moral code in the past also?

Mohamed was a respect businessman in Mecca before he got bear hugged by the angel Gabriel afterward he became a thief and a murder. After Mohamed returned to Media he gathered a following big enough to take control of the politics in Medina. Soon Mohamed started having his opponents assassinated. Mohamed ruled by murdering people Is it any wonder that his followers today are proud to do same? Imagine how much pride Mohamed followers had when the World Trade center came down. They felt the same pride felt when he murdered people. How can they say there is anything wrong with murdering when it was what your religious idol did the same? Mohamed then began attacking the caravans from Mecca, stealing and killing his way to religious stardom.

Religion is a product of the emotional mind not the rational mind. There is nothing like celebrity to keep you out of jail. It was the same 2,000 years ago if you’re a religious icon you can do no wrong. If people applied their rational mind to religion the churches would be vacant.

Mohamed had been a good man but nobody worshiped him while he was a good man but it was only after he became a murder and a thief that people began to admire him. If Mohamed had continued as a good businessman nobody would have ever heard of him today. Why would anyone follow a thief and a murder? How in the world could he possibly become a religious icon to millions? Raw power is admired and those who yield raw power gather followers and there is no power like life and death. Add the authority of invoking being on a mission from God and you create a legend.

We all posses a rational mind but many purposeful chose not to use it and instead view religion through the lens of their emotional mind where the universal laws do not apply. Instead many make a conscious decision to practice magical thinking.

The very words that Jesus is said to have spoke in the bible can be traced to 3,000 years before his supposed birth. It is obvious that the Jesus character was created and the known wisdom of the day was attributed to a make believe character. The stories in the bible are not original the same stories were attributed to many older Gods. The biggest lies ever told are worshiped by millions every week. In a world gone mad it seems we crave only madness.