Modern man – (Homo sapiens) came into being about 200.000 years ago. It is easy to understand that man at that time, lacking knowledge and better models of explanations, could have it that the world was ruled by invisible forces or spirits. The spirits ruled the seasons, the weather, the wind, the animals, the crops, the fertility etc. About 7000 years ago man created the first great civilizations, and about 5000 years ago they invented the art of writing – the very basis for all the higher civilizations later. Through many thousands of years man has acquired more and more experience and knowledge about the world. By the art of writing this knowledge could be written down and kept, be systematized and passed on. In this way our understanding of nature has gradually increased. Little by little one understood more and more about processes working in the nature and how the world functions. There was no longer need of spirits to explain the world. But the spirits, however, didn`t completely disappear.

The last 2000 years mankind has been ridden (haunted) by a stupidifying nightmare. A global public nuisance that came into being in the Middle East. It came into existence in a time and and environment marked with a magic way of thinking, ethnic nationalism and sectarian wishful thinking in a patriarchal society built on superstition and religious rules. These ideas got entry in the top administration of the Roman Empire. By this it got political power and became quickly a world religion. About 1400 years ago a new variant of the same religious regurgitation was smeared together in the Arabian Peninsula – and these two scourges have ever since actually drowned the world in religious muck. Today, after having developed sciences, controlled electricity, atomic energy, fought diseases that tormented mankind for thousands of years, explored space and landed on the moon and even charted the building stones of life itself (DNA) – the world still stands up to its armpits in religious muck.
Why?

Still millons of adults and otherwise mentally healthy men stick to 2000 years old delusions and superstition which in the starting point falls apart on its absurdity and is completely free from any logic and without any credibility.
Why?

And why on earth is it a muddle-headed intolerant desert religion from a backward nomadic tribe society in the Middle East that has been preferred an officially approved delusion of the West ?

A little monotheistic religion has probably never hurt anyone, has it? The answer of this question you`ll easily find by throwing a little look at the last 2000 years of our history. This question you can ask the heretics, members of all other Christian communities other than the official Roman Catholic Church, to those accused of witchcraft or blasphemy, the Jews, the victims of ecclestiastical law, and not at least to all those millions of civilians who were killed in the many relifious wars and the innumerable victims of the many Catholic Crusades.

You may also ask the Indians, the Africans and other mission exposed peoples of nature, and you can ask the victims of fundamental suicide bombers etc. The examples are innumerable. Most conflicts the last 2000 years have had religion as a contributing cause, religious disagrements have often been the main cause behind the hatred and massacres.

Many of the victims of religious violence have ironically enough also themselves been religious, and it is as a rule just their diverging form of superstition that is the reason why they were killed. No one has through history killed so many Christians for religious causes than the official church itself. As known it is from your own you`ll get it.

Politics ?
It can be objected that there often are political motives lying behind, and that religion only is (mis)used as a pretext for underlying motives. This argument is only valid if the person concerned himself is a non-believer. For people with a religious conviction it will normally be the religious conviction that forms his\her view of the world and with that political view, and not the contrary.

Intolerance
The uncompromising intolerance is specific for monotheism. (Schopenhauer). The idea that “we” are better than “them”, that we are right and the others are wrong, and that you have a godgiven right to force upon others one`s own delusions. If the Christians and the Muslims only had held their own bizarre delusions for themselves, but when they in their unshakeable faith about the excellence of their own delusions necessarily must force these on all others, to “save” them, we are at the core of the problem. In many cases it is in addition well-meant.

The inhuman and stupid idea about either salvation or everlasting damnation that we find in the great world religions, is the motive for the wish for saving all infidels. Either they will or not. It is after all to their own best. In a religious based world view the most is either black or white, right or wrong, either you are with us or against us. There is no middle course. If you don`t want to, you shall. Those who think differently don`t know their own best, for if they had known it they would have realized that “we” are right. To think independantly is an abomination for the religious one. Blind and stupid faith is the only way to salvation, but it is also the very source of the problem.

The intolerance of the monotheistic religions and their immanent stimulus to fundamentalism is a certain way to conflict, death and misery. We ought to gradually have learnt this lesson since history has demonstrated this in practise for us, time after time for the last 2000 years ! People who speak about the end of the world and the Day of Judgement with a dreaming longing in their eyes, it is scarcely smart to place them in positions of power.

Christianity and Islam have since their very beginnings been used in bloody political fight for power. Nobody is obviously easier to lead than who have a religious conviction. There is clearly no crime or disgracefulnes that cannot that cannot be justified from these religions. God is after all above every wordly law.

The trouble about the Mohammed drawings showed with desirable clarity how these mechanisms function. This case also shows why religion isn`t anything just to be ignored as just a private matter. The missionary command of both Christianity and Islam and their pig-headed followers` faith in their own infallibility and their god-given right make these religions represent dangerous threats not only against our freedom of opinion and expression, but also against life and property.

The 87 years old Christian aunt Agatha from the countryside who faithfully attend church service everly sunday and believe literally even the most scatterbrained parts of the Bible, and uses half of her minimum pension for the Bible for Food Mission and who energetic is knitting warm wool sweaters for the hungry children in the Sahara, does`nt of course make any immediate threat to society herself. It is hardly old aunt Magda who ends up by putting dynamite in her roller bag to tow it to the nearest crowded supermarket, and in a loud voice crying “Jesus loves you!!” and blow herself up. Even if Christianity of course isn`t unknown with stories about martyrs and on behalf of God to exercise his judgement over innocent victims, Christianity today is largely secularized in the West. Thank God for it !

The very problem of religion is its role of reduction to a state of stupidity, its anti-intellectuality and its restraining effect on development and its conflictmaking character- its immanent potential as a source to wars, death and misery. History has as already mentioned documented this for nearly 2000 years. The cases are so many and so clear that even the dullest among us should by now have understood the reality. But, alas - no.

Why do people still believe?
Most of us are born in a society where one main religion dominates. Children have an unsurpassable capability to learn, and their parents` opinions have a very forming part during their first years. Our parents are the main source to our first knowledge about the world. If these parents seriously believe in spirits and hocus-pocus, the child has no reason to doubt the correctness of this, even though the child`s growing sense of reality would find it somewhat peculiar. When even society also officially accepts this nonsense, what are you then to believe? When you are exposed to religious indoctrination as a child it can be very difficult to liberate oneself from these delusions later in life. You are taught that there is a possibility for the actual exsistence of spirits and magic.

Instead of stimulating critical thinking and rationality, one poisons children`s open minds with sultry conceptions that long ago were rejected by science. Very essential in these conceptions lie the fear of death and fear of punishment and eternal fire. Christianity has always shamelessly used fear and fear of death to recruit new generations. The grotesque religious fright propaganda with eternal infernal fire and torture, - presented as pure facts, has given a turn to rising generations and contributed to make millions of believers lives to a nightmare.

The noise about the Mohammed drawings showed fully which irrational and dangerous forces that live in excessive religiousness. It was frightening and emotional, but unintended comically to see how furious and persdonally offended Muslims participated in demonstation processions to demonstrate against freedom of speech. How smart are you then ? Obviously they didn`t see the roaring irony in this. As a rule it isn`t the most intelligent and bright brains of society that constitute the major part of the religious masses. The lower the knowledge- and education level there is in a society, the stronger religiousity stands.

Everybody knows that uncritical and simple-minded people are easy to lead, and religion is therefore an excellent tool of power for people with a political agenda. If anyone at first believes in Ascension and invisible goblins in the sky, you don't need any elaborate or much persuation to make them go along with almost anything. Not at least if you wrap up the arguments in religious mumbo-jumbo lingo and tell them that "God wants it".

How religious fools plead to speak for and act in their fictious God`s name bears witness of incomparable stupidity. How they make believe that they know their fictive god's inner thoughts and opinions, is a witness of dramatic lack of reality and self-knowlegde.

To think that their almighty and omniscient Supreme Being actually would need help from his least clever worshippers to claim his right on earth, is pure blasphemy. Is he perhaps not almighty after all? Maybe they in their hearts of hearts have a vague suspicion that their god hardly is going to intervene this time either? And how can they be so damned certain that just their private variety and interpresentation of a religion is the only right one? It is allowed to be an idiot, but why do they have to make such a fuss about it?

Respect ?
After 2000 years with a state religion and indoctrination we still treat religious delutions not only with understanding and mild indulgence, but even with solemn respect. It is only the religions that are so treated, all other serious delutions are treated in mental institutions. It is as a rule quite another matter with the respect the other way. In the USA with its double sets of morals and its outside Christianity, which actually has a constitution free of religion, is being an atheist as little accepable as being branded as a paederasty for most people.

Theology?
To keep up with a little religion for home purposes is seen as a necessity to be socially accepted, and to be regarded as polite and well-mannered and morally.
We even keep theology as a subject at the universities. A “science” about a theme (God) nobody really knows anything about, and which therefore withdraws itself from any meaningful scientific method or analysis, and whose only sources as a whole are written by anonymous writers 2000 years ago. This is a “science” with their own faculties, and one can even become a professor there. It is much the same as being a professor in Tooth fairyology, Father Christmasology or "Lord Of The Rings"-ology. Unique ! Astrology you`ll of course not find as a universal subject any longer, but that we still actually have theology at the universities shows us that public religion still has a great influence in society. There is, however, no more substance in theology than in astrology. Society accepts, however, that representatives of this profession are allowed to treat persons in critical situations and even recruit innocent babies as members of their organization. “The profession of the clergyman is contemtible, for what can be more contemptible than to systematically poison humans`imagination with conceptions that long ago are rejected by science ?” (Knut Wicksell).

Normally one would think that adults who seriously believe in Ascension, resurrection, spirits, hocus-pocus, miracles, heaven and hell, water into wine and walks upon the water would be met by scorn and indulgence, and not with respect and seriousness. Otherwise you don`t respect people for their delusions, without regard to how advanced and bizarre these had to be. That the delusions are old don`t make the case any better. A lie is a lie is a lie. That the lie is 2000 years old, doesn`t make it truer.

If one does a suppotion and visualizes that one removes the religious aspect from the conflicts of the world. How many of these conflicts had then no longer existed? Would we have had today`s conflict in the Middle East, would we have had the 9\11 and the “war against terror”, the conflict i Northern Ireland, the genocide in Yugoslavia, Rwanda etc. Hardly. And how many innumerable wars of history and other human disasters such as crusades, witch-hunts, ecclesiastical penal codes, persecution of Jews and heretics, extermination of people of nature etc. These had not taken place if it had not been for the curse of the religions.

The monotheistic religions have been the very prescription for intolerance and hatred, for conflicts, mass murder and war from their beginnings. It is high time to send them on the scrap of history, where they notoriously belong.

 


Religion – the Scourge of the World