A little note to those of you who have the guts to read it.
Do you have the courage, the gall needed to hear what I have to say? I'm a
refugee, an escapee, raised in that greatest of twentieth century cults. Whose
power in the world grows every day. Whose following is climbing exponentially
every year. Whose leaders encourage fear, ignorance, hatred, intolerance,
abhorrence of critical thought through dictatorial commands, censorship and
brainwashing. Collecting money by the millions to finance the manipulative
teaching of the youngest of children -- the next generation of sheep to be
slaughtered on the altar of Deification of Concepts Without Evidence. Fed to
the Great Body, who conquers and devours all as an expanding paternal
self-perpetuating parasite.
When the alternative of seeing the Truth is utterly available, and the weak new
follower sees the option of choosing Truth but instead decides to believe their
Lie, he must protect himself from the Truth. He reinforces his shaky belief
with rituals which help pass the moments when Truth really tempts him. He
studies his dogma dutifully so that he feels he has enough personal reasons to
continue believing, and he actively avoids examining the other opposing points of
view. He knows what they represent, which is the destruction of his way of life
and the exposure of him as a fool. He believes in the concept and value of his
religion's existence, and that justifies living a lie. The Truth is less
important than the lifestyle.
Thus they go on believing that the stars are simply odd little lights, and we
are the only thing that exists anywhere. For all we know, they figure, the
solar system is just a big balloon painted black on the inside with white
spots. The Big Guy is on the outside looking in (it's one-way paint). It only seems
like there's a Milky Way galaxy, which is one of trillions of galaxies, which
contain quadrillions upon quadrillions upon quadrillions of planets. No. None
of that exists. Because if it did exist, then it would be rather unlikely that
the son of the guy who built the whole thing would come to suffer and die on
this nothing chunk of carbon, water, and air which orbits a boring medium-size
star on the distant outer edge of one of 20 billion known galaxies. Kinda sorta
real unlikely. Sorta real real unlikely. Uh, yeah, impossible.
Let's face it kids, Jesus was a visionary human who got himself worshipped as
God by billions of people for 2000 years. Amazing character. Amazing. What
could I possibly do to influence civilization's history as Jesus of Nazareth
did? Nothing. He was in the right place at the right time, and he capitalized
on it. Society was ripe for a change in religion, politics; it was the birth of
the revolution in Jesus' era. Rome was sadistically repressing the Jews. Jesus
was a symbol to rally behind to change things. To gain power. And gain
power they did, starting with Roman Emperor Constantino declaring Christianity
the official religion in 313 A.D. in an attempt to counter rapid Roman cultural
degradation and corruption, and Teodosio making it mandatory in 380. What an
amazing accent by a religious group.
But that doesn't make their religion true, only remarkable in its inception and
growth. It's been added to and revised over the centuries in a challenging
effort to keep it believable. It evolved for 1500 years until the Protestant
Reformation, wherein the religion split in two. The Catholics (and others)
carried on the corrupt traditions of the first 15 centuries, while the Protestants
invented a brand-new path to Heaven (grace through faith), starting their
religion from that date.
It's been used as a weapon to conquer cultures and
continents (North and South America, for instance). But more importantly, it
has been used as an easy morality guide handed down from parent to child
through the centuries. God is a persistent immortal overseer against activities
thought to be not good for society by those in power. He is also someone to
turn to when you're too weak to handle your problems yourself. You need someone
to lean on. Someone to talk to if you can't make friends. To help you through
the hard times. The remarkable reality is that this strength is internal to the
person. "God" is our inner strength finding an excuse to come out.
The strength and feelings of well-being were always there; we just found a
strange but powerful key to access them.
Come on. It was easy to convince pathetic sheep-tending peasants 2000 years ago
that there was a god. They thought the world was flat and lightning was angels
sneezing. They desperately needed something better to hope for in the next
life, since their short earthly lives sucked so much. What's your excuse?
You're intelligent and educated. You don't think disease and hurricanes are
punishments from God. Trust the five senses you do have.
Just because you believe something is real and true doesn't make it exist. Your
religious faith doesn't make you right. It only means you're willing to believe
something for which there is absolutely no proof, nor will there ever be. A
person doing that in any non-religious arena is called schizophrenic and is
treated with strong drugs or placed in a sanitarium. In court, people who have
no evidence for their cases lose. It is the obligation of the believer to prove
the belief, not the skeptic. Nothing exists until it is proven to exist. If I
believe you owe me $20, that doesn't mean you should pay up; it means I have to
prove that you owe me money. The belief means nothing whatsoever without proof.
And neither does your belief, my God-fearing friends. Don't let your culture
tell you what to believe. Think! You can handle the Truth.
|
