These people have all the "answers", and I mean THE answers. Answers that have historically lead to genocide in the name of God since institutional religious fanatics always have to have someone to hate, someone to massacre, and someone to "compare" themselves to.

Catholics are better than Mormons are better than Catholics are better than Zionists are better than Baptists, etc., etc. You get the idea.

The paradox of institutional religion is that it’s weirdly invisible. It programs people down to their quarks, but religion is civilization's "blind spot". It's there, but it’s so allegedly personal and private that it allegedly doesn't play any role in the complex dynamics of society.

Yeah, and I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you. Think about it, the "right wing" is ALWAYS "religious" in on way or another. It's precisely brain dead religious cults and institutions that are the social glue that keeps the fascist hate/greed game going.

If we were visited by a (wise) life form from another galaxy, the first thing they would do would be to "educate" us out of our nauseating religious institutions. They would show us that murder in the name of God is just murder. They would show us that only cloned dogs and cats would expect the planet to go boom (Armageddon) any day now. They would show us that there is nothing on this planet more lethal and infinitely hypocritical than multi millionaire/billionaire religious fanatics.

(Money) + (a loony tunes God) = (what you see on television). It's the chemistry of violence and insanity. It's the MIDDLE EAST. It's what's actually happening.

When religion is authentic spirituality, none of the above is the case, but when it is "institutionalized" (generally by old men in dresses, e.g., theologians), then it becomes the Bible of the Right Wing.

The point is that institutional religion and the political right wing are different ways of saying the same thing.

This is the lesson of the last eight years. When you stir together religious nut cases and the vampire rich, you get hell on Earth. You get George Bush. You get John McCain. You get the American and/or Israeli and/or Muslim lunatic fringe right wing.

Interesting combination of words there, don't you think? "God" and murder?

Human spirituality is a dimension which transcends all this insanity, but religious fanaticism is the absolute toilet of human existence and all of a piece with political fascism.

Thus, the other lesson of the last eight years is that human civilization must purge itself of religious fanaticism and its corollary of equally fanatical right wing politics.

Conversely, true spirituality is the cutting edge of civilization and a living fountain of endless hope.

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W. Christopher Epler (Bill)

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