The faithful on defence
Canada’ Constitution claims freedom of speech and freedom to practice the religion of your choice, or none at all. It’s been my experience that some religious people are defensive of their faith.
David Fairthorne likes to poke the bear.
Every once in a while, I see a Facebook post by an elderly gentleman who amuses me. David Fairthorne seems intent on starting a row between religious faithful and non-believers. I assume him to be atheist. David appears to be having fun sparring with others who engage him to defend their faith.
Islam is better than Christianity, in that in Islam God is not part of the universe?
The above question is David’s latest poke at the bear on Facebook.
Anthony Poirier weighed in as one of the 83 responses to David’s question:
“Absolute bullshit. Almost all post- A.D. religions purport a God which is almost identical to their beliefs, but apparently this envious God hates everyone that it contradicts.
Jewish God - Yahweh, Jehovah. "Strike down the towers and reclaim the lands."
Islamic God - Allah (invented 1500 years ago). The Quran verses from later chapters supercedes the earliest ones. So, basically, it goes from "Love thy neighbors" to "Destroy the infidels" really, really, quick.
Christian Bible is actually the best, but at the same time, the least adhered to.
Being an Athiest myself, I'm just disgusted with religious/ideologic wars. It helps absolutely nobody.”
Tell me how you really feel, Anthony.
I shared my views too.
I acquired a strong distaste for Christianity in the 1960s when I attended a Jesuit private boys high school taught exclusively by priests and brothers. Religion and Latin were required courses. Mass was still heard in Latin at church.
After high school, I distanced myself from the Roman Catholic religion. I fought against the “brainwashing by doctrine” I had received in my youth until about age 40 when I finally reached “escape velocity” to break its bonds.
I now think of major religions as corporations which promote FEAR to create a broad market need, then sell HOPE in the form of eternal rewards to those who are faithful to their products.
Brainwashing?
After reading The Psychology of Totalitarianism during the Covid era, I occurred to me that the Catholic Church has practiced its own forms of mass formation psychosis since the beginning. All of the prayers, publications, rituals, holy images, sacraments, dress code of the clergy, holy relics, etcetera are psychological instruments used to continually flood the consciousness of followers to keep their awareness attuned to the church’s purpose.
The Church had the best record of public compliance in human history until the Covid-19 was foist upon humanity by the world’s secular “religions’ - the all powerful public institutions and their complicit corporate media.
The “secular” religions have successfully taken over the pinnacles of power and control, wrested from the past dominance of traditional religions.
A successful coup
Religions of the past were more powerful than the state when a monarch or emperor was in the seat of supreme power and authority. Religious leaders, particularity popes, took aggressive offensive measures (wars, etc) to command compliance from the people and their secular leaders.
Today, religions fight a defensive war in a losing fight to protect their turf against the more powerful secular elites. A global cabal of these elites, like religious leaders of the past, continue to prey on humanity’s fears but do so more successfully than the traditional church methods.
Churches still promote stories based on fear, but they have updated and expanded the objects of fear to include their enemies - the rich and influential people and institutions within the orbit of the all-powerful state.
When religious people accuse Trump of being Satan, they are simply linking the image of “evil” to a human image instead of that old hairy red guy with horns, hoofs, glowing eyes and a long pointy tail.
Pathetic when you think of it that way.
