Muslims around the world are waging a war on civilization and Alternet is focusing on the threat of Christians???

Did I read that right?

The terrorists must be do, do, do, do, do... lovin it!

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Christianity. Islam. Buddhism. Hinduism. Name your poison.

All these belief systems are toxic in their own way because they replace reason with fantasy, superstition and dogma. And when humans stop reasoning, stop communicating openly with each other, violence and other horrors are not far behind.

The problem is not which religion is better or worse than the others. It's religion itself.

The United Nations should launch a global effort to help humankind overcome religion and replace superstition with reason-based compassion. That's our only hope and, with nuclear weapons proliferating, there's no time to lose.

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Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, et al are all indoctrination systems to undermine reason and by so doing open the path to demonizing the "other." The central crime of religion is ultimately not in the doctrinal systems (though with Dominionism et al they can get rather horrific) but in their undermining of reason itself.

Once reason is destroyed by religion, no atrocity against the "other" falls within the purview of the reason which would expose it to judgment by the standards of universal human values. Once religion is professed, everything is permitted, particularly as aggression against the "other" (though not exclusively; Calvinistic doctrine exempts those reputedly preordained as saved from all moral regulation). Only by rejecting religion can morality find a universal basis, universal enforcement no matter the identity of the victim, and universal application.

Christianity actually has an instructive element of its dogma, that of the antichrist. This dogma teaches that the ultimate evil isn't embodied in he who commits a particular act, but rather, hypocrisy and false claims to holiness. Antichrists (they are not unique) are false prophets, false holy men, workers of false miracles, those who obtain positions of leadership and lead by deception, and those who lead their "flocks" into evil by deception, particularly with respect to conning them into committing evil acts.

This notion of an "antichrist" describes particularly well all those who cloak themselves in piety, who demand fealty on the basis of professed religious belief so as to acquire official sanction for immoral acts as state terrorism or theft by deception. You would be well-served to recall this notion of an "antichrist" when observing Pat Robertson and other televangelists, or those who call for war against atheists (Communists) and Muslims.

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Both groups run screaming from mirrors...


What is truly pathetic is the Germans had the Treaty of Versailles driving their country in to bankruptcy. Wheelbarrows full of money to buy a loaf of bread.

Bushies have used ONE trauma (9/11) as if they were actually inside the towers during the attack. Terrified little bigots squealing to be protected.

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Perhaps it is time to remove the tax exempt status of our religious institutions. Afterall, if you wanna play in the politics game, you should pay your way. No more welfare for churches.

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Same Crusade,
Same Time.
Same Channel!

No one loves the world.

If you do,
Why destroy it?

The Bored again,
Pie in the Sky
Wait till you die
Faux-hristians
Are lost.
Imposters: at the Throne.

Heaven is here.
Where you make it.
Now and forever.
Everyone is enlightened.
Put your best foot forward.
Then:
Step into infinity.

Mother earth will shake,
Rattle
And
Roll
Till:
Harmony is achieved.
Peace.

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Every religion has its extremes. But if I had to pick one I'd pick Islam. Ma'a Salaam.

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The only thing we have to fear in the Bushies is faith in fear itself.

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Faith is within. Faith is trusting in the process.

Belief is negative emotion blasted at you by those without any knowledge of the spirit of the earth, which is about interaction at every level.

Faith is connecting with the life on earth, universe and God. You don't have to be told about faith. Faith is seeing God in the miracle of life manifesting all around you. Faith is love and joy and inner peace. Faith is inherent in being.It arises from within.

You have to be told what to believe and it's something somewhere else in place and will happen in some other time. It's always somebody else's story.You have to believe in somebody else to 'believe'.

Faith arises from within.In the end, your life is your story. Create your own story.

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IT's nearly as loud as a Megaphone!

The above is another example of why those that oppose Israel's behaviour need to really take the gloves off. It's funny how lately every discussion seems to become a springboard into the disparagement of all things muslim. Anyone else noticed it seems to be a lot more apparent not just here but everywhere just lately?

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"Soon after I had published the pamphlet "Common Sense" [on Feb. 14, 1776] in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion... The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion."-Tom Paine

On with THAT revolution...


Jesus prayed that we would all be ONE.
Christ was NEVER a Christian.
Christ was a social justice radical revolutionary Palestinian Jewish Road Warrior who challenged the temple authorities job secutity and the status quo of Rome; the occupying force at that time.
THAT was why he was crucified-Rome crucified trouble makers all the time!

NOT until Emporer Constantine legitamized Christianity and St. Augustine corrupted the gospel with the heretical "Just War Theory" did any Christian ever even serve in the military!
It was understood to follow Christ one must be NONVIOLENT.
100 years after Constantine, Rome required ALL soldiers to be baptized!

Fundamentalists thrive on FEAR and divisevness and the neo-con, neo-christian zionists first infiltrated the White House during the Regan years.

When politicians get in bed with religion, We the People get screwed.

The "Left Behind" theology is a 200 year old MISINTERPRETATION/MISUNDERSTANDING/ of scripture that cherry picks disparate passages which promotes a 'chosen-one' mentality,
it reeks of anti-semitism
and is an abomination to thinking Christians.

If the media would STOP giving the right wingers a voice and report what PROGRESSIVE Christians are about, it would make a huge difference.

Public service message from Progressive Christians from the
.org
WeAreWideAwake

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I remember high school and college being heavily populated by science-phobic people. Ask your Dr. what was their undergraduate major and you may find that the 'scientist' treating you was a liberal arts major who avoided the hard science courseloads opting for higher grades. It is these people who have found answers for 'why' things happen to and around them from unreliable but easy sources. Instead of studying the difficult science that explains the phyical laws of energy-matter relationships and biology that makes us who and what we are, they likely sought the much easier answers offered by ancient metaphorical and therefore, flexible texts. Worse, too many have allowed others, learned by their own estimation, to exlain the world using and abusing those revered texts. So, I have to come to the conclusion that the Americans currently in power are the same intellectually lazy, oh, and greedy people I knew in school. Their enemy is the same real and rigorous science that makes them rich, and drives all modern economies. They control, or try to control the funding for science and health care on 'faith-based' grounds. With as much respect as I can muster, I submit that 'faith-based' is simply intellectually lazy and Americans are fools for allowing this tyrany of the intellectually lazy to continue.

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Erich Fromm's book, Escape From Freedom does a great job of telling us what role religion mainly plays in the world today. It encourages us to seek to be non-thinking members of a mob rather than a community of self-actualized, thinking, feeling individuals. Doesn't have to be this way. Some of the Gnostic gospels, rejected by Rome as unsupportive of oligarchy, viewed Jesus and God as being inside of us rather than standing outside of us to be worshipped. Even pre-Xtian Judaism had moved away from individualism in favor of group-think.

Whatever potential some form of "religion" may or may not have for human enrichment, few cases can be found for its having much value in that regard over the last few hundred years. On the other hand, religion is one hell-of-a useful political organizing mechanism where the last thing Power wants is a democratic citizenry.

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The discussion on the topic of religion continues to be so stupifyingly shallow and banal as to inspire pity -- and exasperation.


Stupid, crazy, fantasy, superstitious, responsible for all the evil in the world, lunatic, the province of those who are ignorant and/or who don't recognize the supremacy of reason and blah blah blah ...


As a person who has spent 59 of her 71 years exploring religion, the Bible, mythology, folklore, philosophy, the human psyche, the wonders of science, the mysteries of nature, and has come to a deep and profound appreciation of human spirituality, I can tell you that those who dismiss religion as any of the adjectives above are truly the ignorant ones.


You really ought not to pass judgment on anything about which you clearly know nothing. You ought to try reading some of the recent books like 'Why God Won't Go Away' -- there is very good scientific evidence that we are 'hard-wired' to search for meaning in life, to try to understand in some depth our very personal experiences that point toward profound mysteries out of the reach of our normal, everyday reason-powered egos.


It is a serious mistake to equate religion with Church and the evils committed by churches, whether they are sins of omission or commission. Churches that remain silent in the face of crimes committed by the Government are guilty of aiding and abetting the crimes. Churches that cheer the crimes of Government are guilty of aiding and abetting the crimes. They are all hypocrites when they equate 'sin' with the petty foibles of individuals and ignore the horrific sins of governments and corporations which destroy lives and pulverize the planet with their hideous activities.


In other words, there is a distinction between the religious individual and the religious institution, just as there is a distinction between the patriotic individual and the political institution.


I now class myself as a generic, free-lance, postdenominational Christian minister. I am not associated with any religious institution at present and probably will not be for the foreseeable future unless/until I can find one with the guts to risk telling the truth out loud, like Jesus did, and take the consequences for doing so.


Until I can find one that repudiates the politicization of the Church, like the backroom deals with the biggest donors who make sure the preacher doesn't say anything on Sunday morning that particular donor doesn't want to hear; or like those churches who pressure their congregations to vote a certain way.


Until I can find one that makes a serious attempt to really teach and practice the love that Jesus taught and practiced.


Until I can find one that is the religion OF Jesus and not a false religion ABOUT Jesus.


Until I can find one with the intellectual honesty to preach what the best Biblical scholars have known for a century or maybe three, that the Bible is literally chock-full of obvious mistakes and self-contradictions and faulty translations; that it was written by mere human beings, not God, with all their limitations; that it was transcribed by other human beings who made errors both innocently and deliberately; and it was edited by Fathers of the Church who had axes to grind and motives of their own to accrue power and obtain total control over their membership and to become very wealthy.


And yet, properly understood, as the best Bible scholars do understand it, a wealth of wisdom is still to be found in it -- at levels never dreamed of by the fundamentalists.

TO BE CONTINUED

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CONTINUED

Idols abound: the worship of Reason is no more reasonable than the worship of the Bible, because Reason is just something we 'believe in', too, isn't it? Yes, it is a useful tool of the mind for getting through our daily lives, and we really couldn't survive without it, but -- do you really think that's all there is? Pathetic.


Reason can't account for the most important things we experience in life -- like intelligence; love; humor; compassion; grief. It can't tell us the 'Why?' of things. It tells us many other things -- 'What?' 'Where?' 'How?' -- but the 'Why?' is in the province of religion and philosophy.


It can't account for the Trust that is authentic faith. 'Faith' that is merely 'belief' based on something someone else has told you to believe, like fantastic doctrines or the inerrancy of the Bible, is not really faith. That is blind belief; there is no more reason to believe it because someone tells you it is true than to believe the moon is green cheese. And I know that from experience. That kind of false 'faith' can crash in a second when one has an experience that shatters one's world-view.


True faith is TRUST -- and it comes from life experiences, not from 'beliefs'. True religion is based on actual personal experiences so profound that mere words are not enough to express them; and so they are expressed through creativity, through art and music and poetry and dance and drama and liturgy and architecture and sculpture and mythology -- all those expressions that have come together sometimes as 'religion'. Which, in the beginning, before it becomes encased in concrete, is very good.


But when it becomes institutionalized and no longer permits growth, no longer permits the Divine Spirit to move freely and creatively -- and you can always tell when that happens, because NOTHING CHANGES ANY MORE, people whine about changing the hymnal or the prayer book or the liturgy or whatever, all of which is genuinely irrelevant to true religion -- then it is certifiably DEAD.


Then it's time for a funeral, to bury it, and to go where LIFE is. And that will be where things are dancing and vibrating and singing and growing and making joyful noises and celebrating Life. That will be where awe-inspiring discoveries are being made, and where creativity is blooming, and where science is turning everyone's world-views upside-down with new truth about the universe -- and where minds are changing and growing, changing and growing, all the time. If that isn't happening, if science seems at odds with religion, then you are in the Dead Zone. Go where the Life is, and there is no War between Truth and Truth. The same Divine Mystery made it all.


Blessings to you all.

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Once again, the left shows why it has lost every major struggle for the last thirty years, even though most americans share its concerns and policy positions. You criticize the right (and rightly so) for being against pluralism, for being bullies who refuse to respect diversity and are untrue to the liberties and civil rights imperfectly drawn in the Constitution.

But as soon as the topic of religion comes up, the run of secular leftists don't even draw breath before pissing all over deeply held beliefs of the majority of people in the world: that this is not a chemical accident, that there is a moral purpose to our existence, that we are accountable to more than the laws of physics.

Don't believe it? Fine. But when you not only pretend that yours is the common sense, normal position - when human history demonstrates quite the reverse - but proceed to call anyone who disagrees with your cosmology a dangerous, mentally impaired, genocidal lunatic... well, that's such a pluralistic, welcoming embrace to the rest of us, isn't it? Gee, wonder why African Americans, the most church going group (with many exceptions of course) in the nation, doesn't dive right in and help the left win these battles. Wonder why the right keeps succeeding, over and over again, in portraying you as hostile to religion? Because you ARE.

It may be comfortable to be right and rational and above everyone else... but it sure isn't doing the country any good when you have the tact and the grace of a fourteen year old.

What is your "final" solution to us Christians, then? Ban our churches? Kill us? What? Your venomous comments only confirm the worst among us that we are embattled, and preclude the possibility of bridge building.

I know all too well that religious belief has been used as a pretext for evil action. But so has science (eugenics? thalidomide? nuclear power? the vast tortures and imprisonment of people with disabilities? All based in science, not religion) and so has Marxism (Stalin? Mao? Shining Path? Can't get much more anti-religious than those folks). If people have evil in their hearts, and lust for power, they will use what ever is available to achieve their ends. Being "rational" is not a placebo for the world's ills.

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I'll mention again that I'm saying this from an academic viewpoint, since I'm not religious and haven't been ever since I was about 5. But bear with me.

Many people here are saying that religion and reason don't mix: you're either religious or rational. I don't think that's true. I've known, or known of, people who are both religious (in the god-bothering sense) and yet quite rational. Many work in the sciences: some of them have odd little quirks that allow them to reconcile some of their odder beliefs, but most see no contradiction between their religious beliefs and the physical universe. They tend to think about it and work out a theory that works for them.

There's also the historical evidence that science and reason often sprang from religious societies. I won't mention examples for fear of starting a flame war, but there are many examples from around the world and around the religions.

So religion and reason are not mutually exclusive. Fundamentalism and reason, however, are mutually exclusive. Fundamentalism demands the suspension of critical faculties in order to swallow whole the patchwork documents that form the basis of many religions.

Anyone who considers the Christian bible the literal word of God, for example, has a few kangaroos loose in the top paddock. The thing was patched together in 322 (I think) at the Council of Nicea, at which time a bunch of blokes got together and decided which bits to put in and which bits to leave out. Many of the bits weren't even written until decades after the events in question, so they're clearly a bit dodgy.

But don't get me started on that topic...

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All religions can be perverted, but the perversion of Christianity into Christianism is the worst.

For a group of people supposedly following the life example of a Man who INVENTED Pacifism, who never fought anyone with any sort of violence whatsoever, but fought only by speaking the Truth; for these supposed followers of this man sanctioning "Holy" "War" against entire other religions, sactioning and even blessing the wholesale theft of land from another people and the fascist horrific violent actions of that new government in keeping and "protecting" that stolen land and people that NEVER BELONGED THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE,

IS UNFORGIVEABLE.

Any so-called Christian that doesn't "get" that this is a perfect textbook example of the greatest sin, the sin that cannot be forgiven, the sin of "blaspheming the Holy Spirit", SURELY deserves their fate.

Any so-called Christian that doesn't "get" that, if Jesus Christ were alive on earth, here, today, He'd be decrying the very existence of the nation of Israel on stolen land, and the death of every baby, indeed, would be raging against the church of Satan masquerading as the "Christian" "Right", and their "endless" "war" against "terrorism", the very terrorism they created out of nothing, SURELY deserves their fate.

Any so-called Christian that supports war over peace, death of "the enemy" over life, intolerance over tolerance, "just" war, "collateral" damage, and "figting the evildoers" instead of LOVING YOUR ENEMY AS JESUS SAID WAS THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT OF ALL, DESERVES THEIR FATE.

And Brothers and Sisters, the whirlwind, it's-a-comin'.

Wide is the road that leads to destruction... who knew Jesus was talking ABOUT HIS OWN when HE said THOSE WORDS?

You know, NOW. Perhaps seconds before it's too late.

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The problem is that god is unsustainable in logic and incompatible with reason. We as human beings are incapable of comprehending god. We cannot understand what he tells us, if he speaks to us at all. We cannot read his words. But there's always someone who thinks they can. lol. As far as I'm concerned, if god really wanted to talk to us, we'd damn well know it when he did. If there is a god he obviously doesn't want to influence our development. I believe this is the only logical conclusion one can make. Yet there is no popular religion where that logic is the central tenet. Curious isn't it? Why do so many people worship a god they cannot comprehend? They may as well worship their toilet bowl.

Somehow we reached a point where we have a bunch of crazy religious whackos in control of nuclear arsenals. From a purely objective viewpoint, the christians seem to be the worst, since they not only possess but also used the most nuclear weapons! The religious political leaders in the US claim to be christians, but they worship Moloch and they break just about every single one of the ten commandments. That's what really bothers me about these right wing christians.... their leaders are so blantantly NOT good christians. Not even close. And yet the followers cannot see it. Well if they cannot see something as obvious as that, then how can they see anything? Take any issue of significance today, and it is obvious that indeed they cannot see at all.

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Not knowing much about religion, but suspecting that the issue has been well-debated over the years, I decided to ask an expert (Ghandi, in this case): Here are a few of his comments:

A religion that takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion.

One's own religion is after all a matter