It could be that as semiconscious animals, we have not yet adapted enough so that we can cope w our counsciousness. Skeptic joseph campbell studied mythologies all over the world. He concluded that we (most of us) need them to live by. Here is a fairly good discussion of your topic, i think.
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Atheist Quality of Life
by Freya Hastings © 2004
from
QUALITY OF LIFE IN THE GLOBAL CENTURY
http://www.geocities.com/kew1788/
God is a metaphor and does not exist outside of imagination. Current religious wars, terrorism and overpopulation prove that religion is preventing social progress, lowering quality of life, and stunting the potential of humanity, in every region of the earth. It is time to overthrow all religion. It is time to ask everyone to discard their religion and read the world?s great literature, history, philosophy and science, to improve intellectual development, to develop fully mature intellect and spirituality. It is time for an Atheist Revolution.
Future of Religion
Magnificent paintings and sculptures, stained glass and architecture of churches should be preserved as our inspirational heritage. Many Christian churches in Europe and America and many Buddhist temples in Asia are among the finest examples of architecture, art and culture in the world. Choral music and pipe organ music should be encouraged as beautiful aspects of art and culture. Church property should continue to be used as secular community centers where social, civic, and environmental nonprofit organizations can meet to serve the public interest.
But when religion insists upon the existence of a God which does not exist, it teaches children a lie. Teaching innocent children such lies is a form of child abuse which must be prevented. It is time to shut down religious schools and religious education. No religion should be supported by tax dollars, school vouchers, or allowed any kind of tax exemption. It is time to tax and claim church property.
U.S. Constitution?s First Amendment: ?Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peacefully to assemble and to petition the government for redress of grievances.? State-sanctioned religion violates the First Amendment which prohibits government from ?respecting an establishment of religion.? All religions are currently state-sanctioned, awarded tax exemptions allowing them to hold billions of dollars in real estate without paying property taxes. Religious schools are given tax dollars through public school vouchers for private school tuition. These policies violate the First Amendment and must end immediately.
Only non-religious, public community centers and agencies that conduct nonprofit work directly benefiting communities in practical utilitarian ways, such as the planting of trees or cleaning of rivers or managing of recycling programs, could be worthy of possible tax exemptions.
Religious Psychology
Sigmund Freud had terrible things to say about religious people. Upon psychological analysis, Freud concluded that religion is a profound neurosis. Those who believe in another world must be profoundly unhappy with this one and unable to cope with reality. Those who believe in supernatural phenomena must be mentally disturbed. Freud saw religion as a mental illness, an expression of repressed sexual libido, and a belief in God is a Freudian transference of a submission to one?s own parents.
Belief in God allows aspects of the ego to remain immature. It allows an individual to remain sheltered under the protection of a parent. It is an excuse to remain a child unwilling to face the full moral responsibility of one?s own actions. By assigning highest intelligence to a metaphor, the religious never utilize a fully developed intellect.
The religious are immature, as toddlers unwilling to accept the fact that Santa Claus is a myth. They have difficulty defining where their wishes and metaphors end and where physical reality begins. This is the omnipotent egocentrism of the immature toddler. They avoid the pain of existential angst by refusing to acknowledge it.
Carl Jung went further, stating that the religious are attracted to organized religion out of a subconscious need to be racist and elitist. Organized religion is by nature racially and culturally exclusive, yet allows members to deny their own racism. Jung concluded that organized religion is merely an aspect of patriarchal tribalism.
The religious do not merely wish to believe?they need to believe. This profound need emanates from a deep psychological need for order in the minds of those unable to accept the existential disorder of a godless universe. Faced with the abyss of existential angst, the religious regress to the toddler stage of egocentrism. In that sense, religion is for the Sudra, an opiate for the masses, while atheism is reserved for intellects strong enough to endure existential angst.
The Truth About Belief
Every leader who publicly proclaims a belief in God realizes there is no God. Even the Pope subconsciously understands that he merely talks to himself when he prays, though consciously he may be in deep denial of this fact. For other world leaders there is no such denial: They publicly proclaim belief in God without believing in anything but power. This is especially true for American Presidents and leaders who have college education and wealth: None of them believe in God, but they all claim they do to maintain an elaborate propaganda system, a cynical manipulation of public sentiment.
When people ask if I believe in God, I reply: God cannot exist because it is obvious that the whole belief system was deliberately created to perpetuate social hierarchy. Believers ask: If God does not exist, why do so many people believe in Him? Answer: Many people are gits.
When every politician proclaims belief in God, many of the uneducated classes are fooled into believing. This system works, even though it?s wrong. Societies based on slavery and warfare worked for thousands of years?that does not make slavery and warfare right?it just makes these social systems very powerful. Power has nothing to do with truth. Often those in power are liars and the worst enemies of truth.
The history of civilization is the story of powerful warlords consolidating and abusing their power over the public. European history is a long list of wars. Not just in Europe: Chinese and Aztec warlords terrorized and enslaved the public, just as European warlords did for two thousand years. The only people who benefited from this perpetual warfare and slavery were the rich. It is not surprising that the rich would also perpetuate an elaborate system of lies to get peasants to serve them.
Religion has always been closely linked to warfare and slavery. For centuries Europe suffered perpetual civil wars in which Catholics and Protestants fought each other. Fighting in Northern Ireland is mild compared to the era of Protestant civil wars. Look at the Thirty Years War in Germany: One of the most brutal wars in history, the Thirty Years War between Catholics and Protestants killed half the population of Germany, in battle and through the famine and plague brought by war.
Another name for God is the Lord?another example that God is simply a perpetuation of warlord patriarchy. The word ?Lord? meant ?Warlord? in the medieval era, then as warlords consolidated their conquered territories into estates, the Lord became the Lord of the Manor, the owner of the castle. This notion of God as a Lord is a relentlessly patriarchal view of the universe in which even divine beings are ruled by social hierarchy. Asking the ?Lord? for ?mercy,? as in the prayer, ?Lord have mercy,? originates from the medieval feudal system when serfs had to fall to their knees and beg, ?Lord have mercy,? to their warlord oppressor. This view of God as ?The Lord? is a Freudian transference of feudal social hierarchy into explaining the universe. There is no room for dissent, social justice, or egalitarianism in such a patriarchal belief system.
Read the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20: 3-17: "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me. Thou shalt not make graven images. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain. Thou shalt rest on the Sabbath day. Thou shalt honor thy mother and father. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor?s house or thy neighbor?s wife.? The first three commandments are childish threats warning of God?s Wrath for all those who question Him, as if the Commandments were written by a warlord for his serfs to obey. Why outlaw other gods or images? Why forbid even mentioning the word God? The first three commandments are childish attempts to oppress public intellect.
American plantation owners allowed their African slaves to learn about only one book, the Bible, because the Bible teaches that the meek shall inherit the earth, that their slavery will be rewarded in heaven, after they work to death for the white man. It worked beautifully: Africans in the Deep South even today believe they will be transported to heaven if they work to death. Imagine how hard it would have been to control these slaves if they realized the truth?that there is no heaven, no life after death, and there is nothing to be gained by working to death, and that if they had any pride at all, they would immediately kill the white man and fight to the death for their freedom.
Obviously, a religion that embraces passive acceptance of slavery is going to be encouraged, and the atheist fact that slaves ought to kill their white oppressors will naturally be snuffed out. It is amazing today that any African, especially those in the Deep South, could embrace Christianity, the religion deliberately invented for them by their white oppressors.
Jesus in medieval times was worshipped as a war god, and the cross represented divine victory in battle, the symbol of the conqueror over the vanquished. Constantine first spread Christianity as a battle cry. ?Onward Christian Soldiers? continued as a war cry through the Holy Crusades of the 12th Century. England?s King Richard Lionheart was a Crusader Knight who abandoned his duties so he could chase Muslims across Europe to provoke battles against Islam, until Islam finally won by taking Jerusalem.
Spanish and French Inquisitions were much like Hitler?s stormtroopers, killers hired by the government to hunt and kill dissidents. Thousands of atheists, Muslims and Jews were tortured and killed by the Inquisitions, with the blessing of the Catholic Church. Christopher Columbus brought slavery and genocide to the New World as Conquistadors conquered Native Americans in the name of God. Many natives who refused to convert had their hands and feet hacked off. North American Puritans and European zealots conducted witch-hunts and hanged many women in the name of Christianity. Aztecs cut the hearts out of thousands sacrificed to their Aztec Sun God.
Throughout history, atheists and scientists could be put to death for the crime of being nonbelievers. The Library of Alexandria was burnt down and the librarian was beheaded by religious fanatics. Even today, machete-wielding Islamic extremists routinely chop up citizens in Algeria and Pakistan in a war against secular governments. Conflicts in Ireland, Israel and Bosnia all have their roots in religious intolerance.
The World Trade Center was destroyed by religious fanatics. This isn?t spirituality or morality. The history of organized religion is the history of a ruthless patriarchy snuffing out threats to its power. Religion is nothing more than racism, nationalism, and Machiavellian patriarchy.
The most absurd truth about belief: Those who believe in God think God is on their side. They see the world through a racist fog of Social Darwinism: Right-wing conservatives win elections because God is on their side. Rich people are rich because God is on their side. Northern European white culture conquered the world because God is on their side. Jews were killed by Hitler because God doesn?t like them. Africans were enslaved because God doesn?t like them. Poor people are poor because God doesn?t like them. Once you believe God is good and helps those in need, you must conclude that the status quo, no matter how terrible or unjust, is intended by God. This is a relentlessly patriarchal, anti-progressive way to view society.
Religious Immorality
Religion has nothing to do with morality. If religion has any connection to moral behavior, it must be that the religious are the most immoral. Look at the most religious regions?they are the most lawless regions. In the USA, the most prosperous and culturally advanced region, New York City and New England, is the least religious, while the most backward and poverty-stricken region, the Deep South, is the most religious. Many prison inmates claim to be Born-Again Christian or Muslim. This is no coincidence. Those who lack the impulse for morals and lawful behavior claim the strongest religious beliefs. Those who carefully investigate religion, philosophy and morality conclude that precisely because God does not exist, it is important to live by morals and laws.
Many Catholic priests are famously turning out to be pedophiles, guilty of molesting children and ruining the lives of countless people. It seems that no Catholic priest actually believes there is a God who watches him. Such damning evidence that priests are flagrantly fraudulent criminal hypocrites indicates that religion is meaningless. Its only potential benefit is to force people to live by a moral code based on a fear of God?s wrath, but when this sole benefit fails in every situation, one has to conclude that religion serves no useful purpose whatsoever.
Muslims who commit acts of terrorism and kill in the name of Allah must be exterminated from this planet. Their goal is to draw the world into more Holy Crusades. This World War III has many parallels to the 12th century Holy Crusades: Once again, the disputed territory is Jerusalem, and once again, the combatants are Muslims, Christians and Jews. Now the fighting will be worldwide because Islam has spread throughout Central and Southeast Asia to include Indonesia, the Philippines, India, China?s Western Provinces and Russia?s Chechnya. WWIII is a Holy Crusade between the West and Islam. It will become a nuclear war, since terrorists will secure nuclear weapons and will not hesitate to use them, since they believe the ?Infidel,? the majority of people on earth, deserve to be killed in the name of Allah.
Intellectuals such as Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, Steven Jay Gould, Mark Twain, Noam Chomsky, George Orwell, Bertrand Russell, are famously atheist. Why? Totalitarian oppression demands religious belief as a system of thought control. Those who are against totalitarian oppression are therefore against religious belief.
Right-wing extremists are Christian. George Bush and John Ashcroft want everyone to convert to Christianity; they want prayer in public schools as a way to do exactly that. Underneath the surface of Christian extremism, one still finds the intolerant patriarchy of the 12th century Crusaders. They want to outlaw all forms of birth control, not just abortion. Read history: A century ago, this same party of right-wing nuts wanted to outlaw condoms.
Religious Oppression
Look at birth control: Abortion is not really the issue. In the 1920?s, Margaret Sanger fought relentless battles against the American Christian right wing and the American Catholic Church, just to win the right to provide condoms and diaphragms to the public. Abortion was so illegal that it wasn?t even considered a political topic. The political topic was condoms, diaphragms and family planning. New York City at this time had tens of thousands of unwanted orphans living on the streets, yet anyone who suggested that these poverty-stricken immigrants should be allowed affordable access to birth control was considered a ?Red? and thrown in jail, as Margaret Sanger herself was thrown in jail many times. Christians claimed that every orphan is intended by God, therefore all forms of birth control are wrong.
Sanger founded Planned Parenthood and continued the fight, but in exile, in England and Norway. Eventually, inexpensive condoms, diaphragms and ultimately, pills, were imported from Europe and flooded the American market. Birth control was finally allowed in America, once big pharmaceutical companies realized there was insatiable demand and big money to be made in birth control.
Outlawing abortion is simply the first step to do away with all forms of birth control. It has nothing to do with protecting the lives of the unborn. It has everything to do with oppressing women. The right-wing is famous for not caring at all about poverty or social justice, so it is a joke that they would care about the unborn. Republican Christians don?t really want to save the unborn. What they really want to do is control the sexual habits of women: They want to slap their own daughters and call them sinners for the crime of having sex out of wedlock. That is the only real issue?nothing to do with the unborn?everything to do with oppressing female libido.
Oppressing female libido is more blatant in Islamic cultures. Many Islamic nations still maintain outdated laws allowing women convicted of adultery to be stoned to death. Such draconian sentences are rarely enforced, but their function is to terrorize and oppress women. In Muslim Africa, thousands of girls still get clitorectomies, the cutting out of the clitoris, to prevent them from enjoying sex, to make them more faithful to their husbands, ignoring the fact that men, not women, are the initiators of sexual liaisons. Marital fidelity is a side issue?the real issue is oppression of women. Muslim women are often forbidden to acquire education or enter the workforce. Laws forcing Muslim women to wear veils and cover their bodies in public are such obvious examples of oppression, they need no further explanation.
Oppression of women results in a dramatic lowering of quality of life for everyone. Muslim nations which oppress women are the poorest, most overpopulated, and most backward on earth. Muslim women are still averaging over four children per family. Scandinavian nations, which first encouraged women to enter college and the workforce to achieve equality with men, now have the lowest population growth and highest quality of life in the world. Scandinavia and Europe are now at Zero Population Growth, and enjoying the higher quality of life ZPG brings. As women break the shackles of religious oppression, go to college and get good jobs, they have fewer children, and society benefits as quality of life improves.
Oppression of women is common in many religions. Joseph Campbell discussed this phenomenon with Bill Moyers in THE POWER OF MYTH. Campbell points out that the Judeo-Christian-Muslim faith originated as a patriarchal oppression of female deities. Judaism was invented by nomadic war tribes of Israel, who worshipped a single male deity, Yahweh, as a conquering warrior god whose job was to smite down all the goddesses. Campbell notes that the goddess was preferred for agricultural communities, while the male warrior Yahweh was preferred for warrior societies. As the warrior-nomads overwhelmed the agricultural communities, they destroyed goddess religions.
Yahweh the Jewish God is the God of the Christians and Allah of the Muslims?Yahweh and Allah and the Father of Jesus are all one and the same, all war gods who destroy the goddess. All the goddess religions were condemned as ?Pagan? or ?Wiccan.? Pagans, Wiccans, atheists and scientists across Europe were oppressed, exiled and sometimes killed by both Christians and Muslims.
Religion is the natural enemy of science. Scientists, biologists and physicists are atheist. This has been true for two thousand years. Science was brutally snuffed out by the Catholic Church throughout the Dark Ages?that is precisely why the Dark Ages were dark. Science was able to prosper and modernize the world only after the Vatican was stripped of its power in Northern Europe after centuries of Protestant wars. If the Pope was still all-powerful, we would still think the earth was flat.
Religion is designed to enslave public intellect and destroy dissent. Right-wing politicians want to see more Church-run soup kitchens, more Church-run charities, more Church-run schools, because as religious belief is proliferated, dissident voices are marginalized. Religious teaching is above all a process of indoctrination into a totalitarian patriarchy where dissent is not allowed.
Christian Cult Insanity
Read the Bible: It?s filled with stories impossible for an intelligent person to believe: God created light and the stars; God flooded the earth and everyone drowned except those on Noah?s Ark; God killed the first-born son of everyone in Egypt for no reason; God parted the Red Sea for Moses; God impregnated Virgin Mary without having sex; Jesus was easily killed even though he was the Son of God; Jesus after death can still walk on water and will soon return to send all sinners to burn in an everlasting hell. All nonsense. Think of all the intellects that have been oppressed over the centuries by dimwits who actually believe this nonsense.
Religion is waning today. But sometimes politics takes a strange turn and right-wing extremists win elections. At such times, there is talk of outlawing birth control, enforcing school prayer, banning the teaching of Darwinian Evolution, and a dozen other bizarre proposals. When this happens, it becomes necessary to remind people that religion is waning for good reasons.
Turn on your AM radio and listen. In every region of the USA, especially in the Deep South and Midwest, AM radio has been overwhelmed by the most insane Christian preachers, shrieking about the pending Apocalypse, about how the earth is only 6,000 years old, about how Darwin was a Satanic Commie, about how Jews and Negroes are proof that Eve had sex with Satan, about how a new star in the sky has been conclusively proven to be Jesus flying through the universe to return to earth to rapture all the good Christians, about how certain scientists have seen this new star in powerful secret telescopes and can clearly see him smiling at them.
Such preaching is psychotic, yet such preaching dominates the entire AM dial. The AM radio dial in the South and Midwest has virtually nothing but insane shrieking preachers on every station. Where do these preachers get money to fund such insanity? Why would anyone allow such insane ranting? The public in the Deep South and Midwest is more backward than many Americans are willing to admit. Many American Christians are at least as insane as the most psychotic Muslim terrorists.
There is great opportunity cost in allowing preachers to take over AM radio. Think of the potential programs that are simply missing from radio, driven to extinction by Christians. AM radio could have Shakespeare plays and theater, educational and academic stations, public forums and public access. Instead, the insane preachers have driven all sane programming completely out of the AM dial, leaving nothing but preaching and equally insane right-wing extremists such as Rush Limbaugh. Religion once again has sacrificed knowledge and culture.
Witness in the Wilderness
Three weeks ago I was on the Bremerton ferry and a Christian youth group was walking around interviewing passengers on religious belief. I could hear them talking to someone behind me. At the end they invited the passenger to pray and attend their church. Sure enough I was next. A man about my age started coaching the teenage girl to ask me questions about Faith and Heaven and How Jesus Can Save You.
I proclaimed in a voice loud enough for the other passengers to hear, that God doesn't exist, that religion is an opiate for the masses (Karl Marx), that even if God exists it would be impossible to believe in the Christian view of him (Friedrich Nietzsche), that organized religion is nothing other than totalitarian patriarchy (Marx), veiled racism (Carl Jung), a neurotic psychosis (Sigmund Freud), a shallow attempt to impose social hierarchy onto intellect (George Orwell), and a scam by conmen calling themselves ministers (Mark Twain). Metaphysical philosophy such as Plato, Descartes, Hume, Nietzsche and Emerson is all the spirituality anyone needs.
The adult was dumbfounded silent. The brave teenager then asked me if there was an afterlife in heaven. I exploded, of course there is no heaven but whatever we build on earth in our own lifetime (Ralph Waldo Emerson), when we die we simply switch off (Albert Einstein), and there is no meaning to life because life evolved through the process of evolution without meaning or higher intent (Steven Jay Gould). I then said that all Church property should be fully taxed, and all religious schools should be shut down in America (as they were shut down in China, Russia and Cuba) because teaching religious lies to young children is a form of child abuse. I think I convinced the girl to turn her back on Christianity, but you never can tell. They staggered away in silence.
Karl Marx understood that God was invented by the powerful to oppress public intellect and perpetuate social hierarchy. Marx made discarding religious belief the first prerequisite toward building an egalitarian society based on socioeconomic class equality: No one can be truly free if they are still bound by the shackles of religion. If God is a metaphor for moral conscience, it is absurd to pray to or worship a metaphor. It is time to stop praying, and start living moral ideals.
Friedrich Nietzsche understood all this in 1882, when he wrote in THE GAY SCIENCE: ?Indeed, we philosophers and ?free spirits? feel as if a new dawn were shining on us when we receive the tidings that ?the old god is dead?; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, anticipation, expectation. At last our horizon appears free again to us, even granted that it is not bright; at last our ships may venture out again, venture out to face any danger; all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; perhaps there has never yet been such an ?open sea.??
Atheism and Existentialism
Living without religion invites an existential crisis. At the heart of atheism is the realization that life has no meaning, and morality is arbitrary. Moral laws in a godless universe are not written as commandments on stone, but temporary, subject to change according to the whims of prevailing government. As Nietzsche said, ?There are altogether no moral facts.? Preachers claim that morality depends on a fear of God?s wrath, therefore in a godless universe, morality cannot exist. The atheist solution is morality without God: Moral laws can easily exist without God, written by people, enforced by people, just as laws of government are written ?by the people, for the people,? as functional utilitarian codes of civil conduct. Whether or not those laws are just depends on the quality of prevailing government.
Evolutionary biologist Dr. Steven Jay Gould describes a godless universe in which ?we just happened to happen.? A godless universe is essentially amoral. ?Morality is not a function of Nature. Humans are doing pretty badly in moral terms,? says Gould, ?but that?s just further proof that our intelligence did not evolve for a higher purpose. Our large brains allow us to do all sorts of wonderful and terrible things, and we do them all?. Morality is a job for all people; it is up to people to invent our own moral code, because we won?t find any moral code in Nature.?
Plato concluded that Man would naturally want moral justice for the sake of civil harmony. Utilitarians Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill agreed, society needs moral codes and justice to maintain peace and comfort. The most basic moral code, the Golden Rule, does not need a religious explanation?it is utilitarian common sense that civil justice is based on the Golden Rule: ?Do unto others as you would have done unto you.?
A godless universe is cold and heartless, and life in such a universe is only an accident. Man was not created in the image of God to bring divinity to the Earth, but rather, as Charles Darwin documents, Man is a smart ape evolved from primitive life. The evolution of life on Earth can best be explained by scientists such as Dr. Steven Jay Gould, who reminds us that ?Evolution has no purpose.? Evolution is a machine without a brain, switched on by sunlight, a mechanical process, like the turning of the tides or the earth revolving around the sun, devoid of meaning or higher intent.
There are solutions to existential angst: Friedrich Nietzsche suggested that a healthy person would cultivate a ?Will to Power,? ambition and lust for life. Arthur Schopenhauer first developed this concept of the Will to Power, but he did not see it as healthy. Schopenhauer said that the Will to Power is the source of all evil. He said our obsession to procreate, build families, accumulate wealth and power, is greedy, selfish, and usually amoral. Schopenhauer preferred more passive acceptance of life, almost a Will to Sterility, Purity, Cleanliness?rejection of Will is a kind of spiritual hygiene which results in peace and happiness. Buddha spoke of Nirvana, a place in which Will is negated and the individual transcends oneself to join the Universe. Even if it is a cold, heartless Universe, one can still find peace through rejection of Will.
Sigmund Freud said that ambitions are motivated by ?Super-Ego.? Eric Erickson concluded that a healthy adult enters a ?Generative? productive phase in which he is motivated to accomplish as much as possible. Abraham Maslow said that the highest motivation on the hierarchy of needs is ?Self-Actualization,? a need to realize full potential. A kind of immortality can be accomplished by raising good families, creating good works, building social progress. Good works can be perpetuated centuries into the future. ?There is one World Mind common to all men,? said Ralph Waldo Emerson. ?The Artist, the Builder, the Planter, history delights to honor.?
Joseph Campbell said that angst can be overcome if you seek to fulfill your true potential. You know what you are capable of in this lifetime, and you can achieve satisfaction by attempting to fully realize your abilities. ?I don?t believe life has any real purpose. I mean, when you see what life is, it?s a lot of protoplasm with an urge to reproduce,? said Campbell. ?But each incarnation has a potential, and the function of life is to try to live to that full potential. How can we do it? Follow your bliss.?
Follow your bliss, regardless of your place in the universe. This allows you to achieve happiness. It explains how to accept this universe, but does not address why. Evolution selected for intelligent beings, and you are one of them, living in a godless universe devoid of meaning or purpose. Strong intellects can deal with this fact, but lesser intellects may require God, a religious explanation, as the only solution to ease their existential angst. In this sense, religion is for the Sudra, an opiate for the masses, while atheism is reserved for the strongest intellects. Truth lives on a mountain, accessible only to those willing to climb the spiritual and intellectual heights.
Ragnarok
After I first published this work, I received a few emails. Proud to get one from a girl who said my work had helped her turn her back on Mormonism. I also got some Christian cultist emails from other teenaged girls. One read: ?Jesus said he loved his children so we asked him how much and he spread his arms wide and died! Spread the good news!? Huh? The teenage retards who send each other these bizarre messages are not interested in anything intellectual or logical. They use the Jesus cult as a form of tribal bonding. Religion is simply veiled racism, a form of tribal bonding.
Religious identity sets during puberty, when libido, individual identity, racial identity, and cultural identity rise to the forefront of psychological development. With rare exceptions, these identities last a lifetime. Nothing to do with God. Everything to do with identity. Another name for White Supremacy groups is the ?Christian Identity Movement.? Muslim terrorists who blow themselves up certainly don?t do it for esoteric philosophical discussions, but out of a misguided sense of Islamic racial identity. Race, culture and religion are mistaken as one and the same.
Summer camp and high school profoundly shape identity. Consider the cult behavior that occurs in a religious summer camp: Singing, dancing, chanting around the bonfire?Impressionable teenagers whisper to each other nonsensical parables such as ?Jesus spread his arms and died...? as the bonfire flames glow on their wide-eyed young faces. Then they dance and sing Britney Spears songs till the fire dies out. Nothing to do with belief. Everything to do with primordial tribal bonding.
Religious high school is just as weird: Mandatory prayers before school, after school, before meals, before games?all cult insanity designed to indoctrinate and condition new cult members. Such behavioral conditioning is effective when coerced upon impressionable teenagers. Such shaping of personality and beliefs in teenage years is like a computer program that hard-wires the mind into a permanent template. This is why religious schools are very dangerous and must be shut down, because they indoctrinate absurd beliefs and false views of reality.
I once asked an Irish woman from Dublin why Catholics and Protestants fight so much in Northern Ireland. She replied, ?Oh it has nothing to do with religion. The English invaded and have tried to colonize Ireland for five centuries, and the Irish Republicans fight for independence. The fighting is never about religion?it?s always about land!? How true. The fact that Israelis are Jews and Palestinians are Muslims hardly matters: Middle East strife is about oil, water, and land. The New Crusade is not a Jihad between Christians and Islam, but a battle between whites and browns over oil, water, labor and resources. It?s about race, not religion.
Let?s be honest and stop confusing teenagers. Instead of Christian schools and Christian summer camps, we should have more white identity groups wearing uniforms and carrying flags marching up and down high school hallways chanting, ?Hurray for white people!? Then they could light bonfires on the front lawn and whisper tales of Mighty Odin and Thor and Freya. That would be more honest than this current culture where racial identities hide behind a veil of Jesus rants and Allah chants.
God is a metaphor and does not exist outside of imagination. Current religious wars, terrorism and overpopulation prove that religion is preventing social progress, lowering quality of life, and stunting the potential of humanity, in every region of the earth. It is time to overthrow all religion. It is time to ask everyone to discard their religion and read the world?s great literature, history, philosophy and science, to improve intellectual development, to develop fully mature intellect and spirituality. It is time for an Atheist Revolution.
Freya Hastings © 2004
from
QUALITY OF LIFE IN THE GLOBAL CENTURY
http://www.geocities.com/kew1788/
