HOPE: The Revolution and Greater Awakening has begun

I was writing fiction July 2005, but EVERYTHING happened and everyone is who they are, except I reported this experience through the fictional character of Jack.

“The Revolution starts now, when you rise above your fear and tear the walls round you down.”-Steve Earle

THE REVOLUTION HAS BEGUN...
                  
   

On Wednesday, July 20, 2005, in Berkeley, California, Jack intuitively sensed opportunity blowing in the wind as he rounded the corner from Durant and Telegraph on his way to UC Berkeley’s MLK student union building for TIKKUN’s first annual conference on spiritual activism. As he crossed Bancroft Way, a young, beatifically-smiling latte-skinned youth handed him an electric green slip of paper announcing:

“Compassionate Caregivers: Medical Cannabis. Two locations, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week.”

Jack mused, “Now that my third anti-inflammatory has been pulled, I can’t do narcotics in moderation, and I am not ready for joint replacement; I wonder if maybe this is an invitation from You to move out here?”

Jack soon forgot all about the aches in his joints--in particular, his knees, which had been crushed in an auto accident when he was twenty-three and then again at twenty-six. The MLK student union building was jammed with people from all faiths, and those who were spiritual, but not religious, who were imagining a new bottom line for America and her true place in the global village. Jack glided up the stairs to the second floor and deeply inhaled the energy emanating from over thirteen hundred American citizens who had gathered in the Pauley Ballroom in support of a new bottom line based on love, compassion, caring, ethical and ecological sensitivity, and behavior; and motivated by generosity, kindness, cooperation, nonviolence, and peace.

Jack imagined a society that honored all human beings as embodiments of the sacred, a society that enhanced one’s capacities to respond to the earth and the universe with awe, wonder, and radical amazement. He imagined the Kingdom of God, where men would turn their swords into plowshares and not make war anymore.

The invocation was offered by Father Louis Vitale, a Franciscan who reminded Jack of one of the least of the seven dwarves, until he spoke and revealed himself to be a man of profound wisdom, enrobed in well-worn burlap:

“The Holy One has called on us. In all of earth’s sixty-five-million-year history, we are living in the most dangerous of times. The fact that a bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and two hundred thousand lives were vaporized within twenty minutes has not prevented man from dreaming up more ways to fill space with weapons of mass destruction. We were not created for militarism, but to turn our swords into plowshares. We have arrived here today by no accident. We have been summoned by the universe to claim the highest common ground. As the Dali Lama said, the radicalism of our age is to be compassionate human beings. We have been called to bring love and compassion back into the equation and assist others to connect with the deepest parts of themselves. Now is the time to realize, as never before, that when any of us suffer, we all suffer. All life is interconnected, interdependent, and greatly loved by the creator, the sustainer of the universe. We are called by love, for love, and to love.”

Professor Nagler, M.C. and scholar, stoked the fire of hope within Jack. “We are not facing a spiritual crisis, but a spiritual opportunity. We offer the power of moral ideas to a country with a lot of religion yet which suffers from a great lack of spirituality and imagination. As William Blake said, ‘Imagination is evidence of The Divine.’ And spirituality is how we grow in sensitivity to ourselves, the other, and to God.  Einstein wrote, ‘Human beings are limited in time and space. We experience ourselves in an optical delusion. We see ourselves as separate from others. Our task must be to free ourselves from our prison of self. Only through compassion can we begin to embrace all of Creation.’ The bumper sticker got it right; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

George Lakoff, the author of Don’t Think of an Elephant, affirmed what Jack already knew, that a nurturing parent raises a child as best they can to be responsible to self and others. A nurturing parent is not permissive or overindulgent, but models cooperation and honesty, and understands that everything is grace, an unconditional gift from God that one is free to accept or reject. Lakoff spoke about God as father, mother, all-knowing, all-good, all–powerful, and the source of the free gift of grace that will open one up to God in the world. Jack thought of Father Matthew Fox’s recent publication, A New Reformation.

During Pentecost week, in 2005, Father Fox traveled to Wittenburg and nailed a new ninety-five theses to the church door, where Luther had nailed his five hundred years before. Father Fox wrote Jack’s heart about an interfaith collaboration and community that intuits God as mother-father God of divine wisdom, and understands that the earth itself is to be tended; its health is just as much a moral imperative for us all as our human relationships. Jack had long ago rejected the concept of a punitive father God and understood that nature is God’s primary temple, and war the greatest abomination.


Jack’s mind wandered to the leper kisser, Francis of Assisi, and Jack thought, Frankie, you sang of sister moon and brother sun, and stood up to the dry rot and rigid religious sclerosis of the church in the twelfth century. I feel your presence here today in my bones, as much as in my soul. Jack went deeper into the silence and in his mind, saw himself at nine with Father Tony, the diminutive ancient Spanish priest, who had held his hand all during his mother’s funeral and chanted softly without ceasing, “Jesus called God Abba, and that means both daddy and mommy. So, God is both mommy and daddy, and now your mommy is a part of God. God is mommy and daddy: daddy and mommy divine.”

Jack mused, “That and the daily readings are the best things I ever heard from the Roman Church.” The heat from thirteen hundred bodies and the noonday sun made Jack fidgety, and even though his knees were aching most ferociously, he still craved a run, but as usual, was grateful for a fast walk. In seconds, he had escaped the crowd in Sproul Plaza and wandered around the rolling tree-canopied campus as endorphins flooded his blood; he no longer was aware of the crushing of bone on bone in his knees. He escaped in his mind to the good times before that Tuesday in September nearly four years ago, when his wife, Julianne, had been vaporized in a stairwell in the Twin Towers.
 
At the first thought of that day when life all changed, Jack immediately roused himself back to reality, sat down, and again became aware of the aching in his knees. He pulled out the itinerary for the conference and thought, I need to figure out where I want to be these next few hours. I’d like to catch some of all these workshops and groups, but there are just too many choices. I’ll start with “Environmental Policy,” and then check out “Sacred Stewardship of the Earth,” and maybe move onto “Theory and Practice of Nonviolence”--no, better yet, “Science and Spirit.”

Jack absorbed what he could from each class, but could not sit still until 8 p.m. when Rev. Jim Wallis commanded his attention back in the Pauley Ballroom. “Religion’s job is to pull out our best stuff; to help us be our best selves. Religion in America has been used and abused to control and manipulate millions of Christians.

“The good news is that there are millions more who are not represented by the Falwells and the Dobsons, and they are raising their voices and doing something about confronting the hijacking of the Bible to further political gain. All faith traditions battle with fundamentalism. Religion is meant to be a bridge, not a wedge.

“The seduction of the religious right by politicians is being challenged by our rapidly spreading grassroots sojourners community that stands up with a firm moral center and echoes Lincoln’s refrain: what is needed today is reflection, penitence, humility, accountability, and that we should all seek to be on God’s side.

“There are over three thousand verses in the Bible referring to the poor; this is the moral issue of our time. There are also the moral issues of poverty, ecology, and war; it is the church’s job to address these moral issues, too. Separation of church and state does not mean the segregation of religion from the human dialogue.

“Our deepest choices are between hope and compassion. Hope is not a feeling or a state of mind, but an abiding choice you make because you have faith. Faith is supposed to change things that look impossible to be changed. Cynicism sees the world as it is and gives up trying to change it. Cynicism is a buffer against commitment.

“History testifies to the fact that all great changes came about by social justice movements that were based on faith and religious values. America has a proud history of progressive spiritual activism. We are the ones we have been waiting for. We can change the nation when we change the wind, and people of faith are called to be wind changers.”

Wallis took a deep breath before continuing. “Let me explain exactly what an evangelical Christian is to be about. My evangelical roots are connected to the path laid down by evangelicals from the 19th century. They were the first to speak out against slavery and were the first supporters of female suffrage. In fact, the original altar call was the call to stand up against slavery.
 

“In this century, we are faced with nuclear weapons and the fact that the arms race put the world in grave danger. The world went to sleep, and now we have escalating proliferation, nations, and groups of angry people with nuclear warheads. The real security threat is coming from the gathering terrorists who are acquiring unsecured materials.” Jim Wallis took another deep breath and ended with “Activists must be contemplatives, and contemplatives must act. The time has come for the Christian Right to meet the right Christians.”

After a standing ovation for Wallis, the radiant Rabbi Lerner approached the lectern and beamed like a lighthouse turned on, and between his smile, said, “This is a historic event. Over thirteen hundred of you are here now, and we had to turn people away because we ran out of room. There is a hunger in America for deep spiritual truth, and the wisdom of the ages is again being spoken and heard. The time has come for the new bottom line. The new bottom line in society challenges the dominant ethos of materialism and selfishness and replaces it with institutions based not just on productivity, but also on cooperation, mutuality, love, caring, ethical and ecological sensitivity, and awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation. We spiritual progressives challenge the misuse of God and religion by the Religious Right, just as we challenge those liberals and progressives who have been unsympathetic, even hostile, to spiritual and religious people.

“We of many faiths, and the spiritual but not religious, are calling for social justice and political freedom in the context of new structures of work, in caring communities and democratic social and economic arrangements. We of many faiths and those who are spiritual but not religious are inspired by compassion, generosity, nonviolence, and recognition of the spiritual dimension of life. We agree we desire a society that promotes love and generosity, recognizes the unity of all being, and understands our interdependence with all other people on the planet. We honor, with awe, wonder, and care, all of creation. We are extending the invitation to every church, synagogue, mosque, and ashram to affirm the prophetic vision of God as the champion of love, generosity, peace, social justice, and ecological sanity. We understand we are to give our highest attention to alleviating the suffering of the poor and powerless. We challenge the policies of governments and political parties that do not promote these values. The new bottom line replaces the old one based upon materialism and selfishness. The time has come; the time is now.”

Jack reflected, “One reason the religious right is the only voice the mainstream media presents is that they have been the most vocal. The e other problem is that the liberal and progressive media have only heard religion according to the right, so no wonder they tune religion out. I wonder how to get around it; how does a new voice rise out of the wilderness?”

The following day, Jack woke up still thinking about all he had experienced the day before. That Thursday morning, he heard Rick Uff ord-Chase for the first time, and was blown away by how such a young man had accomplished so much. Rick was a founder of the Samaritans, co-moderator of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, a reservist for Christian Peacemakers Teams, and moderator of the 216th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church.

Rick began with Isaiah 58: “‘Shout it out, do not hold back. Raise your voice like a trumpet. Declare to my peopleloosen the chains of injustice and set the oppressed freeshare your food with the hungry and provide the poor wanderer with shelter--when you see the naked, clothe themand if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, your light will rise in the darkness and your night will become like the noonday sun.’”


Then Rick offered 1 John 4: “‘Love comes from God and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God, because God is love. There is no fear in love. For perfect love drives out fear, and those who love God love all their brothers and sisters.’”

Rick then spoke of his experiences on the Mexican border and the sanctity of all life. “We become holy in community; we must study and do Torah, and we build the Church by building community. God is within everyone, and the direct experience of working with, for, and among the poor and oppressed is the quickest way one can experience the presence of God.”

After a few more speakers, Jack was overfilled and restless to move about. He wandered the campus while listening to a CD by Dave Rovics, one of the musicians at the conference. For the rest of the day, Jack couldn’t get “They’re Building a Wall” out of his head:

They’re building a wall, A wall between friends, A wall that justifies any means to their ends. Many feet thick and twenty feet high. They’re building the wall between water and land, So we can eat fruit and they can eat sand.  A wall to keep quiet that which you fear most. They’re building the wall to remove reality from your facts on the ground, A wall to keep distant the terrible sound of the houses that crumble and the children that die, A wall to keep separate the truth from the lie.  A wall made of brick but bricks can be broken When the people of Zion have finally awoken And said no more walls, no more refugees, No more keeping people upon their knees. And before apartheid was ended they were building a wall.

That evening, Bishop John Shelby Spong began by asking, “What has happened to Christianity? I have been a student of the Bible my entire life. I am a committed Christian and open to anyone’s opinion, but not to their own facts. The Bible has been used to justify slavery, segregation, to deny woman equality, and to promote war. A lot of evil happens when the Bible is misunderstood and misused. In the name of God, men have become murderers. We live in a world where people in power get to define those without power. The prophets spoke the word of God in concrete circumstances and throughout history. Hosea spoke of God as love. Amos understood that worship and justice go together. Micah confronted Israel with their behavior, and God again told the people what is required: ‘Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your Lord.’”

On Friday morning, in Newman Hall, in the sanctuary known as Holy Spirit Catholic Church, Betsy Rose led the crowd in singing:

There’s a new world coming,
There’s a new world coming,
There’s a new world coming,
I can hear her breathing.

Jack marveled at all the smiling faces around him and about the fact that he had not been in a Catholic church since his youngest sister was wed twenty-four years ago by their brother, Father Mike.

Rev. Dr. Welton Gaddy, leader of the Interfaith Alliance Foundation and pastor at Northminster Baptist Church in L.A, brought the crowd to their feet from the start. “We are people hungry to get on with the business we are about. American politics have already been transformed by religion and spirit, just not the one we believe and desire. We are a deeply divided nation, and the substance of what passes for religion looks like the stuff of politics. There is no such thing as the American religion, for we are a country of over seventy-five faith traditions. The proper role of religion is to link core values, to cooperate, to respect all people, to promote peace, justice, and compassion, and to protect the weak, poor, and the environment. Today, politics have become a form of religion. We need freedom for and from that kind of religion. Religion should command, inspire hope, and build bridges between other faiths and to those with no faith at all. We will be restless until we speak the truth to power. We will be restless until we comfort the afflicted and disturb the comfortable. We will be restless until we become a nation that cares for its entire people and lives with respect towards all others in the global village. May we all be restless, and then speak and act in peace and goodwill, in the spirit of cooperation.”

Jack’s mind wandered back to what he had read in Subversive Orthodoxy: Outlaws, Revolutionaries, and Other Christians in Disguise, as soon as he noted the author Robert Inchausti was on the morning’s program. Inchausti had written, “To change the world we must become receptacles of God’s love, understanding and goodwill. We must have faith, not merely of the mind, but of the heart that surrenders the whole man to the divine inflowmoral action links personal salvation directly to social responsibility. Victory is not the goal, doing God’s will is.”

Jack reflected everyday on what God wanted from him, and spent most of the time in the dark. He left his ruminating behind when Robert Inchausti stood at the podium and proclaimed, “This country was built by spiritual progressives. Spiritual progressives are the center and we are not a mushy middle. The new bottom line is not new at all; it was already articulated by the Puritans. The Puritans were about charity, not power, and that is the true American tradition. We radical spiritual activists are the heart of the American tradition. Of course we know there will always be the poor among us, but our call always has been to respond.”

At the break, Jack was the first one out of Newman Hall, and he strode directly to UC Botanical Garden to be with over three thousand California-native plants and sublime silence. On his way back for the afternoon session, he met a rabbi from Australia and a pastor from England, who had traveled to America specifically to attend the conference. Jack marveled at the possibilities of what might happen on the other side of the world when these men shared what they had experienced.

Jack parted ways with them and headed back to Newman Hall to hear Father Fox speak about the New Reformation. And Jack thought, Everyday, I am crossing paths with so many incredible people. Last month I sat in Reverend Ateek’s Sabeel office in Jerusalem, and the other night I sat next to Abla, his sister-in-law, at a meeting of MEPAC. There, I met a community of tireless workers in the political realm keeping the issue of peace and justice in Israel and Palestine on the front burner. The next day, I was in the office of this riot of a woman who founded MECA--funny, crusty, and salty, with a most compassionate heart. For seventeen years, MECA has been bearing witness to the West Bank and Gaza. Then there’s Doug, the guy from that last work group; I have never known anyone like him. Talk about connecting with one’s feminine side! It has got to be holy wisdom, the feminine divinity that led him to photograph the neighborhood gardens in his town and display them on Main Street, to bring the folks around and build community. Then he takes up dancing and singing--his wife must be wondering who she is now sleeping with.

It was apparent to Jack when he returned to Newman Hall that the fire department’s maximum allowed crowd size was being ignored. In the center of the sanctuary of Holy Spirit Catholic Church, Father Fox proclaimed, “Forget original sin; remember original blessing. There are two Christianities in our midst. One worships a punitive father and seeks obedience at all costs. It is patriarchal, demonizes woman, the earth, science, gays, lesbians, and deep thought. It builds on fear and it supports empire-builders. Its theology includes a punitive father in the sky and teaches original sin.

“The other Christianity recognizes the original blessing that all beings derive from. We recognize awe, not sin, not guilt, as the starting point of true religion. We recognize a divinity who is source of all things and is as much mother as father, as much female as male. We honor creation and diversity. When God created everything, He pronounced it all good. We are here to make love to life. Yes, we are here to make love to life.

“Delight in creation and take your dreams into our politics and institutions. We live in the midst of a suicidal economy, motivated by love of money. We have reached a dead end. What we need to turn it around are hearts in love with life. How do we do it?

“We first must move from domination to partnership, and we begin by educating our young in awe and wonder, not how to take tests. Awe leads to reverence, which leads to gratitude, which will reinvent our species. This is the task of our generation: to regain awe. The three R’s need to be balanced by the ten C’s: contemplation, creativity, chaos, compassion, courage, critical consciousness, community, celebration, ceremony, and character.

“In community, people remain united, despite everything that divides them. In capitalist society, people are isolated, separated, despite everything that should hold them together. We are in the midst of an epic struggle between community and capitalistic society. We need a new narrative. It is the economy of materialism; it is the virus of affluenza that has weakened family life.”

excerpted KEEP HOPE ALIVE

pages 121-129

by eileen fleming

http://www.wearewideawake.org/

by Eileen Fleming (127 articles, 36 quicklinks, 249 diaries, 553 comments) on Sunday, April 1, 2007 at 8:57:36 AM
 

Remarkable comment

I did appreciate the opportunity to read this posting.  There were a couple of comments included that I take serious exception to, the first being that liberal and progressive people have a problem with spirituality and religion.  I buy the problem with Religion but have heard nothing in resistance to accessing our source directly (Spirituality).  It's the middlemen I personally have trouble with, this post seems to exhibit some clergy attempting to 'rebrand' themselves, much like any sleezy dishonest politician.   For me, I would prefer the way religion was treated when I was much younger, which was kinda like masterbation.  Nobody cared if you did it...it was just rather unsocial to speak of it!

 John Freeman.

by Roger (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 228 comments) on Sunday, April 1, 2007 at 1:06:14 PM
 

fact/fiction

Good story,

Fact/fiction indeed.

Thanks, Bill

by W. Christopher Epler (Bill) (190 articles, 44 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 411 comments) on Sunday, April 1, 2007 at 1:15:16 PM
 

PS: Middle East

ANY man is capable of great evil and great good.

A Christian has NOTHING to offer the world;

Unless they have HOPE.

St. Augustine wrote:

HOPE has two children.

The first is ANGER at the way things are.

The other, is COURAGE to DO SOMETHING about it.

God did NOT create this world, so that the inhumanity of men would blow it up.

"Do NOT be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."-Romans 12:21

The Greatest Commandment:

A teacher of the law asked Jesus:

"Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"

Jesus answered:

"The most important one is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'

"The second is this:

'Love your neighbor as yourself.'

"There is no commandment greater than these."-Jesus Christ, from Mark 12: 28-31 who referred to Leviticus 19:18.

Love is not the bombardment of open cities. Love is not killing......Our manifesto is the Sermon on the Mount, which means that we will try to be peacemakers." -Dorothy Day

"BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS: THEY SHALL BE CALLED THE CHILDREN OF GOD"-JESUS, Matthew 5:9

To cast aspersians on the other, one often neglects to see the plank in their own eye-good and evil cut through EVERY human heart.

COMPASSION is what is most needed in this world today; to see and feel the pain of the other and be moved to DO SOMETHING to alleviate their suffering.

e

http://www.wearewideawake.org/

by Eileen Fleming (127 articles, 36 quicklinks, 249 diaries, 553 comments) on Sunday, April 1, 2007 at 9:03:32 AM
 

This needs to keep being said

Bill, the answer to the question in your title is simply: Yes.

I made the mistake, last night, of taking up Chris Hedges' book "American Fascists" to read a bit before bedtime.

At 4:00am, I finally had to put it down, but I didn't want to - many things in it that I had known more or less at a gut level are fleshed out in Hedges' book - the religious nutcases among us want literally to kill all the rest of us, and are slowly but inexorably moving toward a world and national place where the can do just that.

Hedges starts the book with a quote about not tolerating the intolerant, which I think should be published everywhere every day until America and the world start to come to their senses.

Thanks for this article. I don't think it would be going too far to say that very nearly all the major problems of the world could be at least set on the path to a solution if religion - especially fanatical religion - could be removed from the equation.

Rich Miles

by richmiles (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 3 comments) on Sunday, April 1, 2007 at 11:32:49 AM
 

psychos in suits

Thank you Rich,

What's so terrible about this is that these people look like a duck, walk like a duck, and quack like a duck (i.e., adult human beings), but "they aren't what they seem".  The seem like our neighbors and relatives (and of course in one sense they are), but "on the inside" they're wall to wall psychos.  Psychos in suits and that keeps us from realizing that they should be on meds or treated like out patients, because THEY ARE LITERALLY INSANE. 

In that sense the cancer cell analogy is perfect since cancer cell a sufficiently similar to healthy cells that they get to cause fatal damage precisely because of their similar appearance.  But they AREN'T the same. 

With religious nuts, spiritually/psychologically/philosophically they're a different species.  Look at our pinhead president.  Nuts to the skies, but at least he still wears ties.

by W. Christopher Epler (Bill) (190 articles, 44 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 411 comments) on Sunday, April 1, 2007 at 12:50:54 PM
 

can't make the color background work anymore, so here's # 2

Thank you Rich,

What's so terrible about this is that these people look like a duck, walk like a duck, and quack like a duck (i.e., adult human beings), but "they aren't what they seem". The seem like our neighbors and relatives (and of course in one sense they are), but "on the inside" they're wall to wall psychos. Psychos in suits and that keeps us from realizing that they should be on meds or treated like out patients, because THEY ARE LITERALLY INSANE.

In that sense the cancer cell analogy is perfect since cancer cell a sufficiently similar to healthy cells that they get to cause fatal damage precisely because of their similar appearance. But they AREN'T the same.

With religious nuts, spiritually/psychologically/philosophically they're a different species. Look at our pinhead president. Nuts to the skies, but at least he still wears ties.

by W. Christopher Epler (Bill) (190 articles, 44 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 411 comments) on Sunday, April 1, 2007 at 12:57:26 PM
 

These Armies of God are indeed scary

I could not agree more with these sentiments. In 2207 in the U.S. there is still a debate between intelligent design and evolution? Has our society gone religiously mad (or is that redundant)? The Catholic Church is busy protecting pedophile Priests. Jews are practicing Apartheid in Israel, and the Muslims are kiilling infidels around the globe. All of these are being done in the name of God. It seems that the enemy of peace is passionate conviction under the banner of a cross, a crescent, or a star of David? Where is the exit from this madness?

by Herbert Calhoun (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 22 comments) on Sunday, April 1, 2007 at 1:26:14 PM
 

Terminal Religion

by Kent Welton (46 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 37 comments) on Sunday, April 1, 2007 at 1:44:04 PM
 

Can I hear an AMEN??

...or maybe a Halliburton...er halitosis...er..oh never mind!

First of all, while I agree with your idea that religion is a cancer that is threatening this world, you seem to forget that the virulence of the cancer known as christianity was noted as early as a couple hundred years after the supposed death of the supposed focus of said religion, the Rabbi Christ. At about the time it was made the official state religion of the "Holy Roman Empire", it also became the ultimate reason to put people to death.

Of course, the shit really hit the fan when that rascal Mohamed had his "Holy Vision" and began to put together the Koran. That really gave rise to the growth of the cancer of monotheistic religion. Thus began the Crusades, the Inquisitions, and so many other Holy Wars throughout the ages.

Frankly, it has always confounded me that something that is supposed to offer humanity a means of comfort has always wound up causing death, destruction, and bigotry that has "god's" stamp of approval written all over it.

More people have died in the name of god than for any other reason. This truth goes back FAR beyond the birth of the bastard son. Mayans, Incas, and many other prehistoric religions are just as soaked in blood. At least those religions were honest enough to say that their gods demanded blood sacrifices. Today's crop of monotheists refuse to speak that insane truth about their beliefs. They harbor this truth in their hearts, but lack the guts to speak that truth with their lips...well, except for Pat Robertson, but he's a known lunatic anyway.

Jim Jones, David Koresh, Charles Manson; all these men have one thing in common. They blinded people into believing they were god's messengers. The morons to whom they preached then steeped the world in blood, once again, in the name of god. If this is not a form of insanity, then what is it?

I hear many people say that the christians of today are better than the Muslims because the christians don't kill in the name of their god (any more).

B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T!

The list of killings perpetrated by modern christians, while not nearly as long as those perpetrated by the followers of Mohamed, is long enough to be noted. We can put dead abortion doctors on that list. We can put Matthew Shepard on that list, and other men and women killed for no other reason than their sexuality, and the so-called biblical proscriptions against it. We can add the names of all those who died in cults supposedly made in the name of the Rabbi Christ. And so the list grows.

The point is, if christians had their way, the population of this country would be decreasing more steadily than it already is. Auschwitz-like camps would exist from sea to shining sea with a never-ending parade of undesirables keeping god's SS in business for decades.

It is said that humans are hard wired for spirituality. Unfortunately, religion so closely mirrors spirituality, people with weak minds and even weaker wills are easily duped into mistaking one for the other.

Herein lies the danger of the cancer of religion: easily led idiots abound in the world. It takes little effort for someone with a basic understanding of human nature in this area to turn otherwise innocuous people into god-fueled killing machines. Whether they kill themselves (Jonestown) or others (Manson's "family"), the death is just as real.

Unfortunately, the killing will never stop. It is the height of folly to think that the cancer of religion will ever be excised from human reality. Much like racism, sexism, and all the other "isms" of the world, this one will be with us until we blow ourselves off the face of the earth.

Too bad, so sad!

Blessed be!
Pappy

by Pappy (61 articles, 0 quicklinks, 9 diaries, 828 comments) on Sunday, April 1, 2007 at 2:05:30 PM
 

An extremely well-researched book

Hi there,

You might be interested in reading "Mental bondage in the name of God".  Reading this book was a life-altering experience for me.

see: http://www.aididsafar.com/ />

by baaraan (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 6 comments) on Sunday, April 1, 2007 at 3:47:31 PM
 

Earth dying of terminal religion?

Not quite. Mankind has been fighting religious wars for 5000 years, extracting tremendous distruction, and we're still around! Like any other times in history, man today is ready to fight ever more in the name of God, Allah and what's not. There are more than 6 billions of us worshipping under a dozen major religions and a hundred smaller ones. We spend over $1T annually in weapons, far more the necessary for straight defense. You know, WW2 was 60 years ago, and it is about time to have another big one. With today's weapons, surely man can achieve 10 times as much - 600 million dead. The 'beauty' in religious wars are twofold: 1) they never ends, 2) they help out greatly in population control.  But even with this, there will still be enough of us around to worship and fight for another 5000 years. Man is nowhere near dying of terminal religion.

by TomK (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 185 comments) on Sunday, April 1, 2007 at 8:04:12 PM
 

Many Of You Knew About These Problems For A Long Time

I stopped going to church 20 years because of most of the bone heads I met there.   Most people that are religious are good people.  The snakes that exists within are the ones I can't tolerate.

Anyways, this Stanford Professor wrote an excellent book on the topic of faith and religion and how blind faith and fanatiscism is very dangerous in a world of nuclear/biological weapons.

http://www.samharris.org/

by e m (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 19 comments) on Monday, April 2, 2007 at 9:34:34 PM
 

Sam Harris NOT a Professor

As much as I adore Sam Harris, he is NOT a Stanford Professor. He graduated with a Bachelor's from Stanford (in philosophy) and is currently pursuing a PhD in neuroscience with an anonymous university.

by Matt (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 5 comments) on Tuesday, April 3, 2007 at 11:04:16 AM