by American Citizen

Created on: August 14, 2009

...[T]he flattering appellation of [God's] chosen people is no other than a LIE which...priests and leaders [have] invented to cover the baseness of their own characters. Thomas Paine "The Age of Reason"

Religion over the course of centuries, particularly the three major monotheistic religions have done nothing more than keep masses of people ignorant, enslaved and beholden to believe contradictions in terms. That is, to believe in both sides of arguments that are contradictions in terms is to have a divided mind. It's like being made into a crab that can move in any direction except forward in the direction it's looking.

Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Ayn Rand and Sam Harris have become my heroes over the last few months. Thomas Jefferson in his writings encouraged people to avoid teaching (or propagandizing) their religious beliefs on youth until the youth had attained to an age at which they could rationally analyze for themselves the merits of doctrine. Thomas Paine in the work cited above painstakingly critiqued the Old and New Testaments and exposed the contradictions inherent in both. I recommend "The Age of Reason" to anyone interested in seeking a reasonable basis for their spiritual beliefs.

If one is ambivalent about religion versus atheism, consider Deism. Deism is liberating. It accepts a mysterious Creator who established matter, energy and Natural Laws and then leaves creation alone with free will to direct the matters of their lives. There is no sacred text other than the fact of creation itself. There is no dogma. There is no doctrine other than exercise one's free rights without force or fraud upon another. (It's the same philosophic doctrine of Libertarianism.) God has left no man or group in charge of writing God's official history. To wit, God would have left Holy History in the hands of a writer with exceptional writing skills like Shakespeare or Blake, not a barbaric desert dweller like Moses.

On the topic of Moses, I am curious about the Exodus. Seriously, an enslaved people were magically set free. It's a nice myth up until that point. But then these nimrods get their freedom and wander for 40 years in the desert. In 40 years, they can't so much as build a hut, invent a useful tool, or grow any vegetation. The best idea the barbarians had was to melt down their valuable jewelry to make a powerless idol to worship. Then they arrive an yet another superior civilization to their own - the Canaanites - and rape

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