Tuesday, October 20, 2009
America needs to get real
From the RoundTable blog
Read the latest entries
Jerome Schleifer
Schleifer is a retired businessman living in Roanoke
Ardently anti-slavery and equally ardent in her desire to elevate mankind from its baseness, Fanny Wright, traveling throughout America in the early 1800s, strove to free its people from the bondage of religion, which she recognized as a "divisive and wasteful servant of power." Obviously her efforts were fruitless. America today is possibly the world's most religious-oriented Westernized country (vying only with Catholic Poland), its vast majority ascribing to one of many religious sects. A Frenchman facetiously noted that whereas the French have 300 cheeses and three religions, Americans have three cheeses and 300 religions.
But where has this half millennium of religious fervor taken America? The results are obvious: dissension and bickering among diverse denominations and within their own; a country lacking a comprehensive health plan for all its citizens; a government steeped in corruptive practices, its policies tainted by money; and a people separated by -- virtually at war over -- traumatic ideological and geographical differences.
The religious hierarchy in America early on had an opportunity to take the lead in promoting the public welfare and helping to create that perfect union proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. Yet, because the church stymied liberal social advances, it was up to the secularists to fight for women's rights, public education, fair labor practices and livable wages. Religion was too busy saving souls.
It was the secularists, not religion, who sought equity between the rich and the poor. The church could only shake its head, quoting, "The poor will always be with us."
The genesis of all religions is superstition. This was understandable in an era populated by primitive, uneducated masses. But these superstitions became so ingrained in our culture that even today's educated masses are unwilling to shed themselves of supernatural fantasies. One is given to wonder what good education has been to those who have succumbed to the spell of such preachers as Pat Robertson, Jerry Farwell and similar types.
It's been said that man cannot exist without illusion, that he seeks imaginary phantasms to conquer the harshness of everyday realities. In this respect religion has served him well, for there is nothing more illusory than believing life will continue after death. The most harmful aspect of this life-after-death illusion is passing it along to children, generation after generation, thereby perpetuating the invention.
Wouldn't it be more beneficial to instill in a child morals not based on fear, to have no illusion (psychological block) of a punishing God?
If man rids himself of the illusionary God, what can possibly replace the need to believe? He can believe in a tangible god: himself. He can believe in the gods residing in his family, his friends, his neighbors. And all these gods have more power to do good or evil than any God or god-like apparition ever conceived.
Man has the power within himself to rise above his own expectations when he sets his sights on realities rather than fantasies. But he must have courage; he must have courage to let go of a fairy tale where a pumpkin turns into a carriage, because a pumpkin will remain a pumpkin by any other name. Religion is the pumpkin; reality is the carriage.
Not one iota of genetic evidence speaks to the existence of God-input. Rather, genetic and archaeological discoveries, though admittedly not having all the answers, have demonstrated the path of human development.
Problematically, a supposedly educated populace, choosing to believe what it wants to believe, ignores the evidence. This might be understandable and almost forgivable in a culture bereft of education, but in this 21st century era of unlimited information, it is ridiculous to the point of being laughable.
Again, forgive me if I've tread on one's sensitivity, but entering the world of reality requires that one recognize a pumpkin for what it is.
