Choosing Your Religion

"What if we picked the wrong religion, and every week we're just making God madder and madder."
-Homer Simpson


God, does not need a gun. Why would any God want you to kill me because I didn’t believe in him? What would he care? He might be sorry I missed out, but in the end (or at least the end of me) he is still God and I am, well…not. Unbelievers are no threat to any real God.

I read a message on a flying pig, it said "All Religions Divide Us." That's not exactly right--in fact, our religions, at their heart should unite us. We are all seeking, we are all striving, we all knocking on the door. What divides us are religious bureaucracies. Cadres of men telling us they are closer to God than we are. Holding up their version of the holy book, proclaiming "within this book are all the answers, all the truth...there is no truth outside of this book."


"The readiness for self sacrifice is contingent on an imperviousness to the realities of life. He who is free to draw conclusions from his individual experience and observation is not usually hospitable to the idea of martyrdom. All active mass movements strive, therefore, to interpose a fact proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world. They do this by claiming that the ultimate and absolute truth is already embodied in their doctrine and that there is no truth nor certitude outside it." --Eric Hoffer

Sound like anyone you know? Maybe those crazy Islam-o-nazis on the news, maybe that televangelist you just zapped past on the TV?

Religion does not divide us. Religious bureaucrats, with their ceremonies, and their claims of doctrinal exclusivity divide us. They divide us for their own power and profit. Their attempted religiofication of humankind's spritual quest, trying to turn our own sacred pilgrimage into their next holy war, that's what divides us.

"I shall tell you a great secret my friend.
Do not wait for the last judgment,
it takes place every day." --Albert Camus