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An extremely unhinged Alaska schemer, anointed against witchcraft by a real witch hunter, has hundreds of thousands of twitter followers, a million facebook friends.
The USA’s headlines are dominated by inane arguments (see all 7,000 articles from the past 24 hours!) about a religion-based community center in lower Manhattan.
The son of Billy Graham jumps to reinforce hatred toward the president.
Soldiers at our stateside military bases are disciplined for refusing to attend Christian fundamentalist events on base.
The examples seem to be endless.
Where has our sanity gone?
If all this nuttery was happening in some kind of vacuum it would be bad enough. But here we are, facing a serious global environmental catastrophe reaching the point of no return, and all our large-scale information inputs are consumed with jibberish not much more advanced than what Aztec priests must have uttered to justify tearing the hearts out of their trophy victims.
Why isn’t memeorandum linking to the outcry about misinformation on the BP Gulf disaster, instead of the mosque bullshit?
Why aren’t more media stories directed toward the acidification of the oceans, which is approaching the point of irreversibility?
Why can’t we somehow unite as a nation to build a green economy that creates long-term employment for our kids, their kids and so on?
My lifelong belief that there are redeeming aspects of religions which somehow outweigh their obvious shortcomings diminishes day by day, almost hour by hour, as I watch the hatreds of fundamentalists from most faiths combine with the greed of their adherents, to consume the last vestiges of intelligent life from our presence.
I haven’t figured out yet why rational religious leaders have so much less sway than the demagogues.
Is there a way out of this maze?
36 Comments
This post was inspired by scarecrow, rayne and Adam503
Thanks for posting this diary Edward! I think I can surmise the actual diary which inspired this one!!!
I have been commenting on the destructive effects of religion (and monotheistic religion in particular) for some time on various blogs. I will only link to the two comments I made about a week ago on another FDL diary (instead of just repeating it here):
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/63214#comment-229344
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/63214#comment-230234
I think that Western Society and the Islamic World have somehow allowed their sense of identity, culture, and even “scientific” advancment to be intertwined with this idea of being “driven by God” or “fated by Heaven” or “the exceptionalism of ___________ nation.” True Scientists exempted, of course, from such claims. But most of what I read as “science” these days are not really scientific in nature, but more like political agendas or corporate funded push strategies.
There is an active movement in the United States to push the idea that America, the Constitution, and the legal system we use were all inspired and built upon the foundation of Judeo-Christian ethics. And to some extent, that may be true, but its not the whole true story. But its the one being pushed.
The same is true in the Muslim world and in Israel. Its true in parts of Europe. Its becoming a truism in parts of Africa where mission work has accelerated. Look at Uganda and its laws to murder homosexuals.
So, we as a society of people have to realize that although religion brought many things that may be good, it has also brought many more things that are evil. And at some point, we risk ending our species over the differences in religion. A war with Iran for the sake of Greater Israel is one prime example. I have said the same things to myself that you are saying in this diary, and I think the real question is whether people can see a future for humanity that is distinct from this close-minded orthodox dogmatic fundamentalist-driven zeal for religious homogeneity being intermixed with nationalism and national security.
I’d like to be flattered, but I’m not.
In the case of memeorandum, the news aggregation site, there’s a reason why the mosque surfaced to the top. It’s not a serious news producer, only a regurgitator, and it has a decided rightist bent. It has no interest in encouraging development of real stories with serious investigation, just the amplified propulsion of zeitgeist.
The only way we are going to get better reporting and more actual help is to do it ourselves. You know that from living in Alaska; without work by folks like yourself and Shannyn Moore, for example, we’d be sold a continuing string of hype about Palin. Hell, she might even be VP now had not the truth about her been propelled by blogs.
Hey – a lot of us I think still think your intentions are noble, Rayne. Thanks for stepping up to help with Seminal.
And I agree with your post as well – the only way to get better reporting is to do it ourselves. Absolutely.
I think the issue of Net Neutrality, while not on point with this diary directly, is still lurking under the surface. The Internet is to modern day “religion” and corporate power what the Printing Press was to the Catholic Church in the 1500s. And the Reformation would not have been possible without it. The attempts to shut down the modern Printing Press are far from over. And we have to remember that corporate money is VERY PATIENT. Just reading about the water rights issues in California in the Westlands watershed, it reminds me how patient Corporate money can be. They will wait out the best reformers for decades. Civil Rights? 14th Amendment? Labor Unions? All things that can be reversed, slowly, over time. And in the spirit of this diary, lets not forget the most patient and powerful “corporate” money in the world — Organized Religion. Tax-free accumulations of massive wealth, with billions of adherents that can be mobilized on the basis of guilt, fear, and hatred, to create realities that didn’t exist before. The literal shaping of the world is in the hands of organized religion. We have to be ever watchful of that power. And when it mixes and mingles with political power and corporate power, the possibilites of tyranny are endless.
Something I am trying to do as a “citizen journalist” and activist is to constantly tie these concepts together. We live in such a fractured world (see Neil Postman’s writings for a great view of that) that so much TRUTH gets split up and divided and parceled out in incoherent ways. We need to help people stitch the truth pieces back together, so they can see cause and effect, consequences, historical arcs, and understand the real narrative of our society, culture, and trend lines into madness. Then, maybe, people can connect the dots, put the concepts together, and be able to see past the smoke and mirrors. And we need to cultivate thought leaders and change agents that can help influence their social circles (by example of their behavior and discussions) so that lower information and less fortunate people can also be privy to these cohesive TRUTHS.
I used to explain to my daughter when she would ask as a child that some people need organized religion to feel safe in the world and if that works for them and they are finding their way to good thoughts and deeds in that manner then it is a good thing.
What we have here is a failure to find the way to good thoughts and deeds. Organized religion really needs to get a grip, get back to the basics like spiritual salvation and leave politics and warmaking out of the mix.
The gay marriage and mosque controversies in the press are clearly intended distractions from the real problems facing man/womankind. The floods in Pakistan are real. I am still waiting for some Republican buffoons to go build Al Gore’s houseboat in Pakistan and have the US media jump all over that.
Siddartha, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, and the rest had very good ideas. The religions formed around the teachings of these prophets became institutions that perverted those teachings for political gain — at the expense of everyone else. Religion now exists only to rationalize the most obscene and horrific acts of violence, degradation, and humiliation against whoever happens to be the target thereof.
But God (or gods, or whatever we want to call them), has absolutely no interest in the machinations of petty schemers, or religious wars, or self-proclaimed “chosen people.” It is above all that. We, humanity, are a child race that has proven its unworthiness because it refuses to follow the teachings of the prophets sent to show us the way, and choose only abuse their teachings for our own selfish goals.
If we could leave the false religions created to usurp the message of the prophets, and simply follow their teachings as best we can, maybe we wouldn’t be in danger of extinction. We could look inside ourselves and choose to live our lives according to Jesus, Siddartha, and the all the other prophets of peace and compassion.
“lets not forget the most patient and powerful “corporate” money in the world — Organized Religion. Tax-free accumulations of massive wealth, with billions of adherents that can be mobilized on the basis of guilt, fear, and hatred, to create realities that didn’t exist before. The literal shaping of the world is in the hands of organized religion.” mrsdgn
Well said and the horrific shame of the Catholic church and their child rape and child rape cover up really puts it in perspective. How easy for organized religion to mobilize and exploit the mob. The process begins young and the first step is to demand suspension of disbelief.
It would seem our backward, third world citizens could benefit from the concepts of freedom of religion and separation of church and state but who will bring them these truths–Harry Reid, Sarah Palin, Howard Dean…
Yes. I think the Park51 Drama has truly exposed the ugly underbelly of America. It was never about “religious freedom” – it was always about establishing new religious norms. I think history textbooks vastly overplay the nobility of tolerance that the earliest immigrants had for other religions. The Puritans are a perfect example of that. We had WITCH BURNINGS in the NEW WORLD. The inquisition simply found a new voice and was implemented by a new group that wasn’t Catholic. The New World was so vast that each group could find its own “ideal” haven, where it would not have to tolerate the other groups. When “other” came into that ideal haven, they were branded or ostracized. That of course is not the case EVERYWHERE in the New World, but there is no reason to assume this was not also a concurrent ideal of the new settlers and immigrants. As time went by, we started to see the old hatreds and rivalries reemerge. Just look at JFK’s candidacy. After almost 500 years of immigration and settlement of this continent, according to historical narrative under the pretext of “seeking religious tolerance”, why was there so much hoopla about his being Catholic or not? If Protestants and Catholics couldn’t learn after 500 years in this continent to get along, why do we get taught that America was founded as a bastion of religious freedom?
Islam did not just arrive on 9/11/2001 to these shores. Islam has been around for 1400 years or so. And people on this continent STILL have a problem with a Mosque in New York City?
If we can build a Japanese Cultural Center about 8 miles from Pearl Harbor, do we have to also build a Mosque 8 miles from Wall Street? That would place it outside the city limits (or in some directions, outside the STATE of New York). So, distances are relative based on context. 8 miles in Hawaii is like 4 blocks in NYC. So what is the problem? Some people think that Wall Street should be a Mosque-Free Zone. That’s my theory. I think that 9/11 is being used as a pretext to accomplish that. Which is just what this diary was about. The use of religion to accomplish selfish, greedy, or hateful objectives.
Personally, I don’t know if Religion matters so much to me anymore. I’ve been personally burned by it in many ways. I’ve seen it tear at families, tear at communities, and distract from higher ideals. It preys upon people’s fear of the unknown. It is used as leverage to guarantee absolution, forgiveness, or rationalization in exchange for loyalty to a cult of personality, or to sinister agendas, or to further political aims of those in power. When one group attempts to use it to elevate itself above another group (for which EVERY monotheistic religion can be blamed), then it ceases to be a force for good and instead becomes a force for evil.
I used to even think that the spread of monotheistic religion wasn’t all bad because it brought certain virtues with it (temperance, forgiveness, altruism, etc). But, when you look at the unbiased history and archaeology of places that precede the arrival of Monotheism, you can find that those concepts already existed there. I think a false narrative has been spun and taught for hundreds of years, portraying Neanderthal man as backwards, portraying pre-Christian Europeans as “barbarians” and “backward pagans.” There has been a lot of literature that has portrayed the Druids of Europe as engaging in human sacrifice and dark rituals, but in truth, the only source of those claims is the propoganda of Caesar and later Emperors, and then of some missionaries of the 4th and 5th centuries. But archaeological finds have not proven the existence of any human sacrifice in Druidical rituals.
There are open debates still about whether the Egyptian pharaohs even built the pyramids by slave labor, or if they used more advanced technologies to build them. I have yet to see the theory that the stones of the pyramids were not a form of concrete poured into the molds be scientifically disproven. THere are other theories too, and I am open to them, but the concept that the Pharaohs built the pyramids on the backs of my ancestors as slaves is one that is not really proven. Its only accepted culturally by all three Monotheistic faiths because of the influence of Religion. The same can be said for most of the aspects of “history” of all three major monotheistic faiths. Most of it is not found to be corroborated in the historical record. But we accept so much of it as a society simply because Religion tells us to. And then wars are fought over those concepts. What madness! We end human lives and engage in environmental destrution and risk extinction over disputes as to whose mythology is more correct, and which piece of land belongs to which adherent of which myth. And yet, we claim out of he other side of our collective mouth to be in an age of humanity’s zenith of scientific discovery and rational thinking!
Really? We are scientifically advanced? Maybe in the making of mass-murder machines. But not in the ability to separate fact from fiction, or reality from superstition and myth.
Join my church,
http://www.thc-ministry.org/
There is an up side to the freedom of religion, IF it is granted to everybody.
Thanks, but I’m more into worshipping Boletus mushrooms until their season ends late next week.
A few decades ago I noted the rise of fundamentalism in all the world’s major religions. I described it as a reaction to the modern world. People couldn’t cope with the speed of change. It was too destabilizing to them. They felt disempowered. Add the effects of our new understanding of globalization and our experience of 30 years of increasingly corrupt, anti-democratic, kleptocratic elites, it is an explosive mixture. Absolutist interpretations of religion not only give certainty where there is none but define enemies on whom one’s problems can be blamed. It is a seductive combination: No doubts and not my fault.
When you think about it the speed of change not just in the Third World but in our own has been amazing. My father was born 3 months before the Titanic went down, nine years after Wilbur and Orville Wright flew the first plane at Kitty Hawk. He grew up on a farm in western New York without electricity and which used horses for field work. His whole world changed not once but several times before he passed away two years ago. Some people can handle change, some can accept it, but many can not. So you get these weird combinations where you get religious groups extolling worlds that have not existed for a thousand years and more, on the internet.
The danger is in ceding power to them. Those worlds, those certainties, never existed. The new fundamentalists can live in but they can’t sustain a modern state. I am reminded of the Taliban when they ruled Afghanistan. 30% of population depended on international food aid. Why? Because the Taliban could not even deliver such a basic need to their people as food. And what was telling about this was they knew this to be the case and didn’t even care. The threat from fundamentalism is that it would rather cling to certainty even if everything falls apart as a result.
For the same reason their counterparts in secular politics have less sway, I think. Most folks either can’t or won’t think for themselves – they want someone to tell them what to do. I don’t know if that’s born in us, or if it’s a trait some of us acquire later, but it’s there.
Demagogues act like they have the answers. There was a study I read about not too long ago that showed that people who are the most sure of themselves are more likely to be the ones who are mistaken. People who aren’t sure of themselves question their assumptions, and then they check out their judgments. People who are sure of themselves no longer feel the need.
Yet the people who are sure of themselves are the ones who tend to gain a following. It’s almost a prescription for disaster in the kind of world we’ve built for ourselves.
Well, your comment is appreciated – I don’t consider myself a “self-doubter” so much, but I know that I never take anything I believe for granted. I’ve been somewhat iconoclastic my whole life. Very unwilling to ossify or rest in place on concepts and ideas. Once I think I know something, I immediately get an uneasy feeling in my stomach and throat. Its like I realize something is missing. So, I peel back more of the onion and look for curtains to peek around, and stones to upturn. Sometimes, I end up gazing straight into the abyss when I do that. I never like what I find, and I have to give myself a little bit of time to digest the uncomfortable realizations that come with what I find. I have to sometimes reevaluate what I thought I knew. My certainties become mud, and my assurances to myself become hollow and empty.
I have found all this to be immensely harder once I had kids. Because as they are growing up, I realize suddenly that the answers I thought I could give them have changed at least twice over since the first of them was born. Now, I feel hesitant to give answers because I am afraid they will cling to those too tightly, just as I upturn those stones later in my life and realize how flawed and illusory my answers were. Then what do I do? Tell them “sorry, Dad was wrong, its not what I think after all…”? Well… That IS what I’ve ended up doing. And I guess I realize now that is the most honest thing I can do.
At the end of the day, the most important thing I think I can teach my children is that they must never rest in their quest for knowing, for seeking, for learning. To never take an answer at face value. Not even one they found for themselves. But to always challenge themselves. Always ask questions. Always be skeptical that you might have it wrong. And then verify, check, inquire, understand, and always hold a little bit of doubt in the tension of knowing vs. discovering. Always be prepared to let go of what you thought was the “Answer.” Be prepared to have that uneasy, queasy feeling that what you thought you knew was wrong.
And I remind them that this is the main reason why — so you will never be a slave. Not to any ideology, any god, any government, any person, any cult. Never be a slave. Keep your mind sharp, stay humble with your knowledge, and realize that the more you learn, the more you don’t know. And the more questions you get answered, the more you will have. Particularly when it comes to human behavior, history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, theology, and even hard sciences like physics, chemistry, and biology.
We just have to learn, as a species, to be capable of living with the tension of knowledge and doubt. To be capable of functioning with less than perfect awareness. Like thinking reeds of grass, our minds can wander the infinite while realizing we are rooted in the ground.
In addition to the rapid pace of change over the past century+, more people than ever before had the opportunity to achieve a comfortable standard of living, which included a lot of labor saving devices. The outcome is that the so-called “westernized” societies (includes Japan and others) had citizens who suddenly had a lot of “free” time.
Freedom seems to come with a lot of fear, though, and the fear is aided, abetted and ginned up by various demagogues or PTB for a variety of reasons (mainly financial). The fear creates the desire for “big daddy,” the authoritarian mind-set. And then away we go.
(Al)most all religions have had centuries to work out their programs for dominating their flocks. Let’s look at the Roman Catholic church in the 15th C. Martin Luther got disgusted bc the church was selling absolution to the poor on the threat of going to hell otherwise. This is simplistic but basically what was happening. The rest is history. Luther went on to begin the protestent reformation, but those denominations ended being just as out of control in their own ways.
What’s changed? Not much. People are still afraid, and still looking for answers. On my better days, I can feel compassion for how messed up and bamboozled some of these Christians are. OTOH, what’s happening right now, imo, is dangerous.
We are treading a fine line with this ginning up and fomenting of hatred towards Muslims based on very specious arguments. How does one combat it? By educating and informing, as we all try to do (and good for those who do). It is an uphill battle, but without trying, then we surely are lost.
Thanks for the posts and comments.
Max Blumenthal’s thesis in Republican Gomorrah runs along the same lines you’re laying out, Hugh. He even takes it a bit further, describing the cathartic experience of being reassured about one’s place in an imaginary universe upon being forgiven for the latest transgression.
A very underestimated book, IMHO, is A Short History of Progress, written in 2004 by the Canadian author, Ronald Wright. He argues:
I don’t have children, but I’d say you’re right. If there’s one thing my parents taught me, both by their words and their actions, it’s that the ability to think things through for oneself is as important as the acquisition of knowledge.
I think Wright is right. In the past, we have had local and regional failures, but in this century we face planetary failure with climate change, peak energy, peak water, and overpopulation. So far, our response to these has been dismal. When I write on this kind of a long term topic, I point to the real possibility that, left unaddressed, these challenges could reduce world population to under a billion by 2100.
The problem is exacerbated (in this country) by the fact that we have now had several successive generations of Americans groomed by our capitalist masters to be ideal consumers, i.e. completely ignorant.
As John Lennon pointed out, “they keep you doped with religion and sex and TV.” Throw in food, fashion, and trendy consumer technology… welcome to 21st Century America.
Note Bene: Philosophy isn’t categorically superior to religion. For example, many folks find some serious downsides to Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. Also, apparently, Buddhism is not a religion either!
Religion tells us we’re “sinners” and that some god is displeased with us and this has been true since the first patriarchal Indo -Aryan hordes swept down upon the Goddess cults of the Fertile Crescent.
the hordes simply slaughtered the people already there in the name of their gods, becasue they didn’t need slaves, they needed pasturage for their flocks…thus the Flock, led by the religious leader came to have profound meaning.
As I have studied world religions and mythology all my life, Especially here lately in Joesph Campbell’s. The Masks of God series, it has become apparent to me that the whole Armageddonist/end of the world idea ORIGINATED with the patriarchal religions.
The Great Goddess was creativity and fertility, yes, but she had her dark and it was DEATH. She was Nature.
The Patriarachs somehow thought and still think that if they can somehow subdue nature, whether out there or within themselves, they can end death…thus the life after and the various heavens and nirvanas to give hope and also to control populaces for political/power gain. It keeps people in line esp when they are suffering.
And there have been few times on the earth when people HAVEN’T been suffering.
Religion also gives divine rights to kings. They are appointed by the gods and therefore must be obeyed. this is creeping back as well.
But the most important point of all, at this time, I think is that idea that somehow some messiah will come to save MAN from his Mistakes. And the more arrogant MAN … becomes, the more mistakes.
This also frees the conscience form the destruction of the planet because, NATURE is evil and must be suppressed/conquered and the Great Goddess must die, not just symbolically, but a true death this time…to redeem all true believers.
Now, if anyone can’t see the fundamental problem here. Let me spell it out.
Women were, by religion reduced to chattel and can have no effective voices in their cultures, the more primitive and strongly patriarchal, the worse it is.
What we have allowed to happen and which was just begun to be addressed by the discredited feminist movement and is now being pushed back by the fundies is a species in which one half, the half most in tune with NATURE has been delegitimatized, traumatized and rendered voiceless. sometimes physically. but always violently.
It almost seems to me that the religious right got it’s groove back SPECIFICALLY to address this most profound threat to the patriarchy and the ascendancy of MAN over the whole world.
It’s not and never has worked out well for life in any of it’s forms but especially wimmin and children.
And now, we’re going to see the end result of the tap root of the Dark Con of MAN.
because it really is too late
“The Pill” did more to empower women than any other invention in human history. It also sparked our contemporary “culture war” because many people, ostensibly in the name of religion, have been trying to stuff that genie back in the bottle ever since.
Roe V Wade, IMO.
but wimmin dropped the ball as well.
You can maybe see how all this is endemic to all cultures as the Dark Con of MAN has been responsible for ascribing blame to the womon for ALL the problems; Eve, Pandora, numerous other female figures have unleashed war, pestilence, famine, disease, you name it while the “clean and pure MAN” gets off the hook every time.
so those infuriating lies told by the right, or anyone in power and the religions which any sane person knows are 180 degrees from the truth have their very genesis in the overthrow of the Goddess cults.
If you want to read about the insanity of western religion, of all the books I’ve read Campbell’s “Occidental Mythology” really tears it wide open and even HE can’t see the basic problem. The blinders are centuries in place.
when I read that, I thought, if only we’d had THAT in our consciousness raising groups in the 70′s
I’m going thru that now. It takes alot of courage to step off the ledge and let the angles support me. but I now know/trust myself like I never have before, so it’s cool.
I trust my instincts where religion would drown them…ANY religion.
This is how my search for a more redeeming aspect of God went today.
Thanks for all the interesting comments, pups.
That is huge fun.
We get no wild shrooms here at all.
A veritable bumper crop this year, with record rainfall in July and early August. And I feel better after the hike. Needless to say, I was pretty bummed out last night when I wrote this diary.
I have to read that series. I had never heard of it. I haven’t been reading much fiction in a while. Its been a lot of nonfiction. But right up the same alley as you. That was my point about how history has been written to vilify the Pagan and the Heretic. The archaeological finds now begin to indicate that the pre-Cro Magnon societies of Europe, in particular, were Goddess Fertility oriented, but otherwise peaceful. They buried their dead (instead of exposure which was found in other parts of the same geological period). They appeared to be using weapons only for hunting, and they had elaborate hunting rites that honored the lives of the animals they took. Then, it appears that Cro Magnon man appeared, and with it came much of the warfare, aggression, and the Sky Father religion. The Horned Man was the new cave painting.
So, I think there is more truth to that line of thinking than people realize. The biggest threat to monotheism was the existence of other entire systems of belief. Notice how Jealous and Vengeful the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was? I come from a tradition of Judaism that pretty much puts all of the Hebrew Scriptures into relative context, realizing it is mostly mythology and analogy (and historically outdated, so therefore, it needs to be read with a critical eye). That is obviously not acceptable to the Orthodox Fundamentalist, literal reading. Nor do most Christians want to apply that level of analsis to the New Testament. But if you find that the God of the Hebrew Scriptures (aka Old Testament) was particularly willing to use Evil to further his own aims, or to call a wicked man a “man after his own heart” – (examples are the wholesale destruction of populations for the sake of his jealousy, the willingness to anoint rapists, murders, and to elevate thieves, the elevation of a man who sent his best general to the front so he could have him killed while he also fornicated with the man’s wife, etc). All for the sake of a Jealous God. He would wipe out the Northern Kingdom FOREVER for the sake of Jealousy. Wow. What a theology, huh?
But the real point was not the that this God was really jealous or not. The point is that these scriptures were written by MEN WITH POWER who needed a way to combat ASSIMILATION into other faiths.
Do you want to know what the greatest threat facing Orthodoxy and traditional Judaism today? I’ve grown up my whole life knowing this (since I was old enough to know it). ASSIMILATION. And this is what the leaders of the Tribe have written about since there was a written word. Alway a threat. To allow ASSIMILATION. So, it is no suprise that the God of this faith was written as being most concerned about the separatness of his people. The story had to support the political objective. Which was to make it undesirable to lose followers. To keep the adherents from straying to “other gods.” That included other Monotheistic Gods. So, the entire point was always to make sure that when Monotheism took root, that it always be rooted in the ABRAHAMIC version of Monotheism. That is why, I think, that Christianity and Islam are so successful. They were, at the least, based on Abraham as the source, and put Jerusalem as the center of the earth (well, Islam strayed a little, and put Mecca there, but made Jerusalem the 3rd holiest city).
And all three faiths have a MESSIAH. Whether it is the Shiite 12th Imam, the Christian Jesus, or the Jewish Messiah. The Sunni’s also believe in a Messiah. So, all Monotheistic faiths that have been allowed to survive because they have checked the box on those requirements. That they have a patriarchal nature, that they uphold a Messiah. That they keep Jerusalem central to their religio-political schemata. That they all put Abraham as the father of “enlightened” humanity.
Do we see the pattern? All things must be bound to the Abrahamic faiths. One God to keep all in line, right?
So, we can see how Paganism and Heresy (and non-Judeo Christian religions) are all the big problem to this established religious hegemony. The People of the Book may wage war with one another, and end up taking out humanity in the process. But they are going to make sure that it will be the God of Abraham that wins. Whichever religious heir of Abraham that will be. Anything that ever challenged that Abrahamic supremacy has been eliminated (or attempted). So, maybe Hinduism is the only large-scale faith that is left to be wiped out.
Just impose the womens’ rights movements, the gay rights movements, and the rise of neopaganism over this tableau. I don’t know what to do with this information, yet. But I think its worth investigating, understanding, questioning, and realizing that much of our history has been written with this context in mind, even if most did not intend that to happen. It comes from thousands of years of religious power, where history is literally erased and rewritten during those years. By the time “modern humanity” comes along, we are so bereft of truth that all we have is meager bits of archaeology, history, and anthropology to go by. We study ancient texts uncovered by the sand, and we try to piece together the dissonance between what we find, and what we were taught growing up. And the religious authorities (of all 3 majora Abrahamic faiths) have a joint vested interest in making sure that anything that challenges the supremacy of the Abrahamic God be silenced or downplayed. And then, they vie with one another as to which of their versions of the Abrahamic God will win. But all three faiths have agreed on much of the same story, historically. This ensures that only the more trivial matters are up for debate. Muslims don’t question whether Jesus even existed. Nor do Christians. And Jews just keep out of that debate. As long as Christians remember that they worship a Jewish Carpenter, its okay for Jesus to have existed. And as long as Muslims have a holy place in Jerusalem, there is no worry that they will ever do anything to jeopardize that site.
I think there is a big shell game being played politically, and fear mongering is a big part of it. Just looking at the history and archaeological side of things, one can begin to find that a lot of stones need to be unturned, and that a lot of smoke and mirrors has been used for a long time. The dissonant proofs are there. But only because those extant pieces of evidence were not destroyed long ago. They managed to survive. And now, as they are found, if they are secured by people with integrity, they are downplayed. They are not mentioned in history books. Only people with PhDs (or insanely devoted lay-persons with time and motivation) know of these extant pieces of evidence.
And do you think PhDs with tenure and research grants are going to rock the boat that put them there? Are they going to bite the hand that feeds them? NO WAY. Not openly.
So that leaves the rare number of PhDs with guts, or Masters students who switched gears and kept up the research but also chose a career in law to make their money without being dependent upon a hijacked Academia that has been bought to keep truth silent…
And those people pop up and try to spread the word from time to time too. And most will likely not realize how many are out there, who have studied these things. And will encourage everyone else to do likewise. It may not make money, or lead to cocktail party conversations, but it will free the mind. And if enough people do it, then the invisible shackles of guilt, false history, and mythology-gone-mad may be broken by society as a whole. At least, I hope so.
For your consideration in answer to the question “Is there a way out of this maze?”
All is as it should be given that reality regarding human interaction is completely in the hands of said humans. Ouroboros, the predator that feeds upon itself.
Dinosaurs lasted over a hundred million years.
The evolution from homo erectus is only 1.8 million years ago.
The Sun still has 5 billion years of life before it goes nova. Plenty of time for another ‘intelligent’ species to arise.
It may be that viruses and bacteria are the real ‘master species’.
Had cockroaches been nine feet long, the history of this planet may have been quite different.
This article really sums up how one group of extreme zealots plays another group of extreme zealots, to the detriment of sanity, and humanity.
Rapture Ready: The Unauthorized Christians United for Israel Tour
RICE – The enabler of Armageddon:
Secretary of State Rice’s response to the disaster in New Orleans was: “The Lord Jesus Christ is going to come on time.” She added: “If we just wait.” “On time”? How does Rice know the exact time Armageddon starts? “If we just wait”? That means in her, that is our, lifetime! Just because you are in position to CREATE Armageddon, doesn’t necessarily mean you should!
Reversing the sinking PH trend is certainly the key thing that needs to be addressed globally. It’s certainly more important than the Trident missile program or the undeclared wars in the Levant. The anti-science trend aids the latter causes, to be sure.
All religions have sects.
All sects are cults.
All cults are superstitious.
All cults believe the others are superstitious.
It’s unlucky to be be superstitious.
Big Dan featured one of your postings within his thread today.
I just realize that I made a typo in my original post. Its my grandfather-in-law that I am referring to. My father-in-law is busy making his trip arrangements and dealing with the inevitable end of life issues that are fast approaching. My thoughts are so tied up right now in his present stress stateside that I put the two men in the same shoes. But the rest of my point is still the same. He has lost the will to live on. So many others have gone on now, and he feels that the place he is now lingering in is but a shell of what it could have been. When one loses hope in all they have struggled to build, they find the will to live quickly evaporates.
I think a lot of our fellow Americans will be facing the same kind of pain over the next few decades. As many who remember growing up after WWII, believing the lies of our government that this was a war to end all wars, that this was somehow done for a better tomorrow, who then grew up watching the assassinations of King, JFK, RFK, countless of civil rights marchers, John Lennon, the students at Kent State, the thousands of loved ones who perished in Vietnam for the sake of nothing, and the slow dismantling of what this nation could have been… they too will find their last days hard, as they realize there is little here they still recognize.
Which brings us back to the topic of religion again. I guess that is why some will cling to what they don’t know. Because what we do end up knowing is mostly evil and disappointing. Children, nature, and love are three things I take great comfort in.
“Like the music of the mountains,
And the colors of the rainbow,
They’re a promise of the future,
And a blessing for today.
Though the cities start to crumble,
And the towers fall around us,
The sun is slowly fading,
And its colder than the sea,
It is written from the desert,
To the mountains they shall lead us,
By the hand and by the heart
They will comfort you and me
In their innocence and trusting
They will teach us to be free…For the children and the flowers are my sisters and brothers.
Their laughter and their lovliness would clear a cloudy day.
And the song that I am singing
Is a prayer to nonbelievers
Come and stand beside us
We can find a better way.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zktGIElNbNg&feature=watch_response
Maybe that is the best way to describe my true religion. And this man was the best at singing it. He has gone past that great unknown, but his words still hold meaning for us today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWfGmAWjAGs&feature=related
His song at UNICEF 1979. Still as true today as it was then.