"What's that supposed to mean? I'll look forward to your reply."

          Okay--Wesely--here it is.

          I think religion works a lot like affirmative action. Somebody gains, but somebody loses too. In the case of affirmative action, the people who were wronged by society (for the most part, at least originally, decsendants of slaves and native Americans) were suppose to get something in return for what had been taken from their predecessors. The problem with this theory is, the people who were in line to take advantage of it were not the people who were wronged, and the people who were to pay for it were not the people who wronged them.

         This is getting way to complicated.

         In the end, the people who paid dearly were poor white males. Affirmative action and Title 9 went on to help women and minorities at the expense of poor white males. It didn't affect rich white males at all, because money is always the great equalizer.

       That's grossly oversimplified, but in the interest of getting on to the topic at hand, I'll leave it there.

       What religion does, it seems to me, is to create an "unreal" environment for young people. Society has large numbers of people who will happily escape reality through alcohol, drug abuse, trash television shows, and etc. But these shortcomings are easily identified and can be avoided.

       Religion, to me, is just another way to avoid dealing with the real world and huge numbers of people are willing to do this. It wasn't really a problem, at least to me, until Reagan. Whoever was running Ronald Reagan sanctified escapist religion and made it OK. Until that time in was wanning, and would be pretty much on its way out by now if it wasn't for him (them?).

       So you have a society where only a handful of folks are willing to deal with reality, and their numbers are so small, nobody hears what they have to say. So, for the most part, everybody is spaced out on something, and most of the space-outs are drugged with religion.

       A young person coming into an enviroment like that, who tries to make sense of the world he/she sees has a tough row to hoe, and no help to do it. In the beginning, when they still have most of their wits about them, they can see the holes in religion and go on to other things, just to make sense of it all.
       They turn to meth, crack cocaine, pot, and a great many of them don't go beyond alcohol.

       If responsible adults would just turn their collective backs on religion in the first place, we'd have a sensible society for young folks to emerge into--they don't however, and that brings out the Salvation Army Band and the raging lunitics to save the lost youngsters.

      So all of the churches who claim to be doing great things, are only trying to correct a problem they created in the first place--the way I see it.

      To answer your question then, I would say the church goers who are submitting to anyone who will listen that they are doing "good works" are much like the auto mechanic who fouls up your car, and them makes himself out to be a hero when he miraculously figures out how to fix it.

    I'll go bar the door now, and wait for the men in the little white suits with the butterfly nets to show up.

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