Other essays on this theme

Essay: "God"

How has the concept of god as an effective force managed to survive to modern times without manifesting any provable results from prayer? Buddhists pray with machines, Islamists pray five to seven times per day. Christians and Jews pray like crazy. All receive no measurable benefit from these activities beyond what can be found in one's psyche and the feelings of good will if foists in persons made aware of this behavior. Would people obtain this same benefit if, instead of being seen praying to non-existent gods, we simply followed the golden rule, showed compassion, integrity, empathy, etc? Probably not, because living a life that god would approve of, minus the meaningless rituals, doesn't put you in front of an audience like church, Bible study, self-flagellation and screaming in joy does. The best actor in the world is no good is he performs only for himself or to an empty house. God is always said to be present everywhere in every religion, and this dogma is what keeps religious people acting religiously even when the theater is obviously empty. God and all his trappings is a very useful tool for preventing hopeless people from murdering themselves and/or others. God is great for playing big brother, forcing the wear and the frightened to act ethically. Without god to be the bully's bully, we'd all have a rougher time dealing with the ethically challenged. God is often used for maligned purposes, however. Politicians, news-stalkers, judges, prosecutors, lawyers; just about every public figure hides behind god to keep their lack of moral fiber. They use god as their took for fleecing the masses of gullible voters who keep them fat and rich. Lenin saw how god and church kept the victim classes from turning on the predatory classes and rightly called religion "the opiate of the masses." Almost nobody took note, especially the victims. They just kept praying for salvation in the "next" world while slaving for the merchants and aristocracy in this world, never even wondering why it was so important to labor a lifetime instead of leaving for heaven immediately. If we made a graph for each country measuring religiousness versus education, we would immediately see that, generally speaking, religion depends on ignorance, same as politicians, the aristocracy, merchants and connive-artists do. All these religions and people try to limit their victims to only one book. People who aspire to greatness can't get there by limiting their horizons to only the Bible, the Koran, the Upanishads or any other type of mystical nonsense, however scantily clothed in some fact. The brain in not infinite, we do use every bit of it, no matter how hard we concentrate, we can't fly away on any astral plane, killing animals for the devil won't get us anything either, and anyone who told you that they'd been to the next world and back is an opportunistic liar. Worse, if you believe such crap, you're his tool. There are no shortcuts to "Enlightenment," no free rides, no "born again" and no one lighting the way. To learn what's real and distinguish it from the fake is hard work, and you have to do it alone, be reading the very same non-fiction books that your teachers tried to make you read in school. Real life is big; much bigger than any religion. Get in it and make it better.