Written by Lobo Aru,visit his site if you like Dark Poetry
http://www.dark-poetry.com/index.cfm
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. Who's power in the world grows every day. Who's following is climbing exponentially every year. Who's 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. Fed to the Great Body, who conquers and devours all as an expanding paternal 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's been used as a weapon to conquer 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.