Civilization can no longer afford the hypocrisies and violence of institutional religion.

[wcepler]

Institutional religion is a game. It has rules and punishments, but it has NOTHING to do with the human heart.

The human heart doesn't need institutional religion. Jesus wasn't a "cleric" and neither was Mohamed or the Hebrew Prophets. These men didn't have "institutional back up", such as gargantuan buildings and the game rules written by men in dress-like institutional uniforms.

These last eight years have put religion under a spiritual microscope and what we have seen is beyond loathsome. Mostly, we have seen religious fanatics who justify murder in the name of God. Indeed, God, for them, is virtually a synonym of murder.

We also shouldn't forget such IQ refuse as those who actually believe the world is going to go boom in next week or two (Armageddon). Such thinking (and similar nonsense’s') is grounded is abyssal stupidity and is more dead weight of institutional religion.

Is the human race ready yet to face the fact that most of what passes for "religion" is moral trash and criminal stupidity? It's time for this meaningless free ride to end. It's time for civilization to transcend religion.

"Religion" is a tricky word because some of us can play the religion game in a tongue in cheek manner, while remaining committed to the transcendence of spirituality and morality. This is probably harmless enough since the individuals who do this know full well the human heart is all, and such religious peripheral game playing can have a certain pragmatic value.

But this is light years away from the Homo sapien morons and cowards who have handed over their lives to cult leaders and Pope types. The first step of spirituality is realizing that TRUTH HAS NO AUTHORITY and when it comes to transcendence or "God" (if that word works for you), you are 100% on your own. Indeed, the more you depend on the cult "leaders" is the more you kill your own soul.

George Bush is an archetypal boot licker of religious masters. So is John McCain. These two spiritual vacuums are the essence of what spirituality ISN'T.

However, this isn't so much a spiritual critique of certain individuals (however evil); it is rather a critique of institutional religion, or just religion itself for that matter.

To say it point blank, religion is mostly a lethal virus in civilization, but we keep looking the other way and acting as if religion is kind and helpful. Yes, about as kind and helpful as eating ground glass.

Religion has become the enemy of civilization. How can we think otherwise? Has it come to the aid of bleeding human beings during these last Bush/neocon/Nazi-like eight years?

Has it heroically stood up and pointed out that Bush's neocon cabal answers ONLY to the Israeli lunatic fringe right wing, and that this "ally" (what a laugh!) has been wagging America's foreign policy nonstop for the last eight years (actually much longer)?

Has it DEMANDED that we put 9/11 under a microscope, since hundreds of internet sites are overflowing with evidence that the Bush/Republicans didn't just "screw up" with 9/11, rather they played a dramatics role in ENGINEERING it.

Has it come to the aid of the American people to protect us from being driven bankrupt (along with the country at large) because of the manipulations of Texas energy corporations and such monsters of greed as Cheney/Halliburton? More specifically, where has religion been while the gap between the increasingly non existent lower and middle classes and the vampire rich is greater than it has ever been in American history. Jesus' heart went out to the victims of elite greed, but the American pulpits are occupied only with immoral, Bush-validating wimps.

Show me as clergyman, and I'll show you someone who can’t even spell the word morality and compassion.

We could go on and on, but the moral is simplicity itself. Religion has now bonded itself with political evil and has become in every respect like the spiritual filth Jesus whipped out of the "temple".

The human race is doomed unless and until it wakes up to the reality of dead weight religious evil, since, to use our children's language, it as gone over to the dark side.

Please do not read this as hyperbole or jive. The churches have abandoned us. Period. And a few token remarks by Pope X, Y, or Z mean nothing. Judge them by their fruits indeed. Most Americans in one way or another are dying in a ditch, but the institutional priests (of all religions) keep averting their gaze.

The moral, social power of religion could (and should) be awesome. It should be in the face of the evil which is murdering America. But, to borrow a phrase of T. S. Elliot, religion isn't even letting us die with a bang, but with a whimper and we should NEVER FORGET IT.
**********************************************************************

W. Christopher Epler (Bill)

<http://theliberationofrealism.blogspot.com/>

[Deja Q]

1. I don't think civilization is too happy about the pseudo-anarchy we've become, either...

:shrug:

[BlooInBloo]

2. Some thousands of years ago religion served the sociological purpose....

of utilizing the "leisure time" that came with the advent of food production, for the purpose of developing peoples' thinking skills. The period of religion's utility ended around the time of Copernicus, at the latest.

Since then, religion has done essentially nothing but serve as a crutch for the weak and a tool for the evil.

[MercutioATC]

3. You make baby Jesus cry.

You're right, of course...but more than half of this country would still put "god" above self-preservation when it comes to creating and enforcing rules.

What you define as harmful is what a lot of people consider the most important positive thing in existence.

[Cleita]

4. We certainly don't need religions that create victims.

However, much of mankind will always have a need to believe in gods. I do believe there should be secular laws though defining what religions can't do within a society when they start victimizing certain segments of society. This would be victimizing women and gays in today's religions. So church meddling in secular clinics that provide abortions would fall into that category as well as those churches who meddle in secular government laws preventing marriage between gays. Those churches should lose their tax free status and be fined. If someone becomes a victim because of that interference like a girl dying of a back alley illegal abortion, those churches should be charged as accessories to murder. Churches and religions should keep their ministries to preaching about the kingdom of heaven and doing good works and not meddling in the rule of laws for all of society.

[knitter4democracy]

12. I'm all for that.

Freedom from religion makes sense. The only thing I wonder about is, if we had those laws in the 1800s, how they would've been applied to the abolitionists, suffragettes, and the progressives, most of whom were Christians and some of whom were preachers preaching about it from the pulpits.

[tularetom]

5. Napoleon said it best

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."

[msongs]

6. or keeps the rich murdering the poor... nt

[wcepler]

10. A social E = mc squared

Oh my God! HOW DID I MISS THAT QUOTE? Thank you, thank you, thank you. That sums it up like E = mc squared.

Bill

[gaspee]

11. I love that quote.

[Demeter]

7. Two Good Things Religion Does:

1) Until recently, the only way to live and work as an artist was to service the Church.

2) Such stifling of the intellect that religion produces has driven most of our progress in the sciences and politics.

Versus the bad things: war, corporations, slavery, prejudice, ignorance, hate, and unsanitary public health.

[ngant17]

8. Liberation Theology might be somewhat organized

insofar as it has been developed since in the early 1970's by various North American and Latin Americans: Frei Betto, Catalina Romero, Phillip Berryman, Daniel Levine, Gustavo Gutierrez, Segundo Galilea, Juan Luis Segundo, Lucio Gera, and Leonardo and Clodovis Boff, Jose Miguez-Bonino, Rubem Alves, et. al.

Also, Jean-Bertrand Aristide (the recent president of Haiti before being deposed in a US-supported coup) was influenced by liberation theology, which is to say that Christians must work for social and economic justice for all people. For Aristide, liberation theology meant criticizing the repressive dictatorship of Jean Claude Duvalier and protecting the rights of the poor in Haiti.

In the gospel according to Luke (Luke 1:51-53), we see the very first homily of the nascent revolutionary theologian, Jesus Christ:

"He came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord."
-------------------------------------------------------
"...but it is not wise to be tugging at that tunic of Christ, because he has pulled out the nails from the cross and he is holding a torch in one hand and a bomb of dynamite in the other one. Look out!"

Carlos Baliño, co-founder with Julio A. Mella of the Cuban Communist Party
from FALSE PROPHECY, in The New Republic, Tampa, Florida, May 29 and June 5 1897

[knitter4democracy]

9. Oooohkaaaay.

Use that broad brush much?

[Festivito]

13. And you will trade it for what?

The non-god-religion of something? Wonderful. The NGRS.

And when the NGRS of country one hates the NGRS of country two for not being green enough, or being too green, and they rally behind their own brand, and strike for a series of well placed lies that make some residents of one a lot of money... what would you have accomplished. NOTHING!

Yes, some will use the brand name religions to spread hate and make money, and some will use any brand, religious or not, to make money. Throwing out religions will not stop branding.

By the way, religions do deal with the heart -- some better than others. Some religions even describe people using the brand for bad purposes. If you transcend religion, you'll have another religion.

And, not all churches have abandoned US.

[wcepler]

15. freedom

"If you transcend religion, you'll have another religion."

How sad.

Religion is a GAME (rules, theologians, etc., etc.) and when you stop playing a game you are free.

The alternative to institutionalized religions are the birthright intuitions and feelings of each of us. We are children of the universe, not religious robots.

[Festivito]

16. A small bit of freedom. Maybe less than you had.

Religion is more than a game, more-so it is an attempt to have something absolute in our lives. Perhaps as a crutch. Perhaps as a way to comprehend the transcendental. Perhaps as a minimally part-time guide to our lives in a forest of incomprehensible magnitude.

We might only be children of part of the universe.

Religions can and do incorporate intuitions and feelings, it is not necessarily an alternative relationship.

If you rid yourself of rules, theologians, et. al. you are indeed free of rules, theolo.. et. al.. But, then you are not free to have rules, theologians, etc...

Janis Joplin's freedom is not a description of all of freedom.

[windoe]

14. The shadow of religion is the abuse of power,

it disguises and legitimizes a hierarchic social structure that opposes democracy, individualism and personal will. I blame religious leaders of nearly all the religions for advocating fear, intolerance, prejudice and hate (especially in the buildup to this recent war), instead of preaching peace, cooperation, ecological consciousness and population control.
They have great influence and too many of them have taken a destructive and greedy path.
The voices of dissent against violence, as well as speaking up for the separation of church and state, must get much louder.

edited to acknowledge pissing everyone off, and that I know that there are peaceful religious leaders too. They need to step up.

[HamdenRice]

17. Yup, those awful people, Martin Luther King, Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama ...

Bishop Trevor Huddelston -- yup all religious leaders are frauds and couldn't spell morality if it was spelled out in their corn flakes next to an image of the Virgin Mary.

:sarcasm:

(And I'm an atheist, but I think these blanket condemnations of religion are stupid.)

[windoe]

18. Exactly, religion and any ideology is just a powerful tool

that can be used for ill or for good. Criticism is better aimed at the individuals who misuse these works, than at the religions. You said it much better than I did.

[wcepler]

19. authority for truth is for children

Religion in general can be anything. The issue is institutional religion which presumes to be an authority for truth. Plus, where has it been for the last 8 years? Plus, Buddhism is entirely another matter since it doesn't have a "dogma", like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

[Doctor_J]

20. Isn't this sort of like saying we can no longer afford any form of government?

Religion per se' isn't the problem, any more than government is. and the Pat Robertson/Sun Yeung Moon zealots aren't any more brainwashed than the Fox News zombies. Your brush is way too broad.

[wcepler]

21. ?

Being able to find precision in general statements is the challenge of language.