Voluntary Society - Religion

Ignorance of the origin of religion and its evolution makes the religion con easy.
Imagine you were never told religious stories over and over again, or imagine that like the stories of the Tooth Fairy and Saint Nick, you eventually learned they were an untrue joke on you. What would you believe before you learned of death?

What would you believe after you learned of death? Would you simply accept death as a natural function of life, or would you invent an afterlife or cycle of lives to molify your fear of death?

If you experienced something you didn't understand or didn't like, would you just accept it as an unknown awaiting research, or would you invent something you have never experienced to explain it?

Would you name your invention to make it real? Would you enable it with the powers necessary to explain your unexplained or unwelcomed experiences? Would you keep adding powers to explain each additional unexplained or unwelcome experience until your invention was all-powerful?

If your invention is all-powerful, it must be responsible for floods and other calamities. Will you thank it for only destroying half your home or killing half your family?

Perhaps your spirtuality spot on the posterior parietal cortex of your brain is underdeveloped, and it's you talking to yourself rather than your invention talking.

If you invested years of your life in a belief system you advocated to everyone, and sold to your children, but came to doubt, would you admit your doubt to everyone, or would you fake your belief or deny your disbelief to avoid embarrassment?

Perhaps you are one of those children. Perhaps you are inherently moral, or learned the advantage of reciprocity. Perhaps like a child with a secret friend, you have learned of real explanations for things, and no longer need your parent's invention.

On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind.” -- Thomas Jefferson
The epitome of a religionists:

Peanuts Classic Linus and the Great pumkin

Gods are created for four reasons:
Religions grow around these beliefs to dictate behavior in minute detail.  Pontiffs, potentates, politicians and oligarchs learned the value of religion as a less expensive means of controlling populations.

Unfortunately, religions the fear of death as a means of control by establishing criteria for admission to an afterlife or next life that applicants must obey if their wishes are to come true.  Of course it's always their fault and not that of the beneficent deity should their prayers not be answered.  Stories are endlessly repeated to indoctrinate the wishful in a complex belief system the wishful would not independently concoct - Truths stand on their own.  Lies require reenforcement.

Good stories like that of Akehenaten get adopted by later religions like Christianity to lure the vulnerable masses into the grip of the priesthood, which infects and corrupts rational minds such that the wishful can be made to do irrational and terrible things.

Science Channel:

Amenhotep IV became Akhenaten, which means "Effective spirit of Aten" (the sun compared to the stars), and led his people into the desert away from a priesthood becoming more powerful than the  pharaoh.  In the New Kingdom he built a city, Amarna to worship a single god, Aten instead of multiple gods, and attempted to destroy the idols of the old religion, but financially broke the economy of Egypt.  Most of the population rejected the new religion.

Biblical Abraham sounds like historical plagiarism to me.

His son, Tutankhaten, which means "Living Image of Aten", became Tutankhamun, which means "Living Image of Amun" ascended the throne in 1333 BC, publicly renounced his father's belief in Aten, and restored Amun as the supreme god among gods.

Amun is also spelled Amon and Amen or Amen-Re and Amen Ra. All Ancient Egyptian prayers ended by saying Amen. Sound familiar?

The 1963 Britannica states that the Book of Psalms and Proverbs was written by the Pharaoh Akhenaten.  Interesting Books written on Ancient Egypt are from Moustafa Gadalla.  Gadalla is an independent Egyptologist born in Cairo. He has written five internationally acclaimed books about Ancient Egypt. He is chairman of the Tehuti Research Foundation dedicated to ancient Egyptian Studies based in the U.S. Books: Historical Deception: The untold story of Ancient Egypt, Egyptian Cosmology and more: Rediscover Ancient Egypt - Tehuti Research Foundation - T.R.F. The 10 commandments are a copy from chapter 125 of the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

See Dear Dr. Laura Schlesinger, Bible AbsurditiesZeitgeist, The God Who Wasn't There, Rose on Religion, Deconstructing the Walls of Jericho, The Origins of Christianity and the Quest for the Historical Jesus Christ and Gods Versus Physics - Dealing with the advocates of 2,000-year-old technology, History of Religion, Particularly Islam, Esther Contribution, Aggressive (defensive) Atheist, Wake Up America and more from Pat Condell, From those wonderful folks who brought you the Inquisition, Germany/Israel, The god who wasn't there, Who Was Jesus? Fingerprints of The Christ! and History of Religion and Islam in Particular.
Lucy and the great pumpkin

Peanuts Classics Lucy Great Pumpkin frame 2

Classic Peanuts Lucy and Great Pumpkin frame 3

Bible Summarized

Richard Dawkins on militant atheism
Dan Dennett says religion should be taught in schools -- objectively
Michael Shermer on why people believe strange things
Diane Benscoter on escaping a cult
Julia Sweeney on letting go of god


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