Getting a little tired of this holier-than-thou political season?

    We might ask here when does "faith’ become fascism?

    I would say that it is when you claim your prophet is the only one, the only son of God. Mind you, this is a God you’ve never seen or heard and one that you imagine you are somehow separated from, even though there is no such thing as discreteness in this energy-laden universe.

     Indeed, we are all interpenetrated by the same waves of energy as everyone else. Separation from the universe, from these energies of life - i.e., from "God" - is then impossible in very the nature of things. Only the counterproductive mind energies of belief act to separate us.

     Yet it is separation from heaven and God that is religion’s very old business. By creating a belief of separation from existence you create a guilt and admission-to-heaven business. You create sin and charge for its redemption. You create fear, even terror of "hell" and not going to heaven, and you can get people to do anything... even believe six impossible things before breakfast.

    You bury and burn books that contradict your own fairy tales. You poison and murder other enlightened beings... because another son of god screws up the whole business. Another enlightenment is not then cause for celebration, wonder, and examination of the entire phenomenoa of spiritual evolution but rather worry over one’s own religion business and belief.

     Belief buries Enlightenment. Belief runs scared, afraid of new enlightenments. Belief never mentions enlightenment. The western world has thus been imprisoned in such hoary, one-guy, beliefs and we have been paying the heavy price for several millenia.

     In effect, the only-son-of-god routine is an impolite way of saying every other enlightened being throughout history is of no account, only Jesus, Jehovah or Mohammed count.

     I’m saved and you’re not. That’s orthodoxy for you, its All belief, All The Time. Hallelujah!

     Now, whatever makes you a better person is fine and certainly produces some wonderful charity. But if your beliefs blind you to the myteries of the universe, keep you from exploring your interiority, keep you from science, and cause you to go to war against unbelievers, then your beliefs are clearly dangerous and counterproductive... both to yourself and to everyone else.

    History is clearly one very long and tragic tale of believers fighting one another and screwing up the lives of all those peaceful nonbelievers, and those just trying to get some quiet time for meditation. Belief is then the problem, and not the solution.

    Moreover, what did Jesus say? He said "the Kingdom of God is within you." Right on Jesus, and how do we go within? Meditation, it seems.

     However, prayer as we know it is but talking to a male sky-god we assume exists, and knows everything – even all the mind-boggling trivia of billions of beings simultaneously!  We’re driving the poor man mad!  Why then are we talking and praying out loud instead of listening, and going within?

     In practice, the father-image God thing (its never a woman?) is a way of putting responsibility on someone else, throwing it off our own shoulders and making sure the women don’t get out of control. So what was the first thing Patriarchy and its male-sky gods did? Why they smashed any remaining Matriarchies. You know that whole women out of a man’s rib thing gets you to thinking it’s your divine right to "dominion." Hey, imperialism had to start somewhere.

    Never fear, God is here... just as we imagine him. So then we don’t have to do anything, and anything that happens is "god’s will." Overpopulate, screw up the environment, smash nature, start preemptive wars – hey, its God’s will... or, "the Devil made me do it." Somehow, it’s always those damn "godless" unbelievers.

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