Little Hawk

I understand that you believe in Jesus, Buddha, Joseph Smith, Bob Dylan, and other enlightened beings etc It's the salad bar approach to Belief...take some of the cole slaw and potato salad and leave the carrot jello alone. Nothing wrong with that. I suspect your approach to reaching heaven is likewise esoteric. Perhaps you think that right action leads to inner peace, or even unity with the life force. I'm treating this rather lightly, but I think that such belief is admirable.

Other people believe that specific dictated behaviors are required to reach a specific, concrete reward. They aren't content with unity with the life force. They want to know they'll be able to romp around in the afterlife in a place that resembles the Epcot Center. Part of their path to eternal vacation may very well involve the destruction of you and me and anybody within a 2 mile radius. They don't believe, as you do, that the Bible or the Koran or the Book of Mormon are "attempts" to "render the word of God". They believe that those books ARE the Word of God, and as such are infallible.

Do I believe Religion should be outlawed? I am actually way too much of a pragmatist, as well as being basically, fatally tolerant, to profess that. I would hope, however, that by seeing religion for the flawed belief system that it is, that Humankind would discard it. And I think we're running out of time to do it.

Carol

Communism, Capitalism, Feudalism, and most other isms are as open to abuse by tyrants as religion. The difference is that Communism can be broken down to theoretical precepts that are fact-based. Problem: Peasants own no land and therefore they are trapped within a cycle of back-breaking production and virtual enslavement to those who own the land. Solution: Distribute land to the peasants and they will break the enslavement cycle and produce more goods while benefitting themselves and society in general through the process. I know that's a gross oversimplification. But it points out what Communism is meant to be...a scientific solution to an existing problem based on known facts. The fact that Communist governments, or Capitalist ones, become tyrannical bureacracies are not a direct result of the theoretical solution, but a perversion of it. Religion is not fact based. It is primarily a solution to the problem of Fear, mainly Fear of Death. The idea that death can be escaped is highly irrational, and the solutions... counting beads, bowing toward Mecca, and wearing sacred underwear... are likewise irrational. Religion is a myth-based, irrational solution to an unsolvable problem. Unlike communism or capitalism, it is the basic theory that makes no sense, and therefore the perverse and insane outcomes produced are the only logical part of the process.