Egregious Errors in Religion--www.world-class-education.org

V.4 Egregious Errors in Religions

Ignorance is ignorance. No right to believe derives from it.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.

Charles Darwin (1809-82)

Cruel men believe in a cruel God and use their belief to excuse their cruelty. Only kindly men believe in a kindly God, and they would be kindly in any case.

Bertrand A. Russell (1872-1970)

Because the traditional problems of religion are identifiable, their elimination is possible and would end the tyranny of the past over the present.

This writer

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

Galileo facing the Roman Inquisition.

Truth meets power when facts contradict revelations,

C. Banti's 1857 painting. (Photo source: Wikimedia Commons)

Introduction

A. Origins of Errors and Motivation for Their Acceptance

B. Errors from Ignorance of the Real World

Claiming Historical, Contingent Conditions as Divinely Ordained
Inferring Essence or the Soul from Contingent Facts
Disconnecting Important Claims from Reality
Explaining the Mysterious with the Occult
Folklores Sanctified as Sacred Scriptures
Superstitious Beliefs
Supernatural Involvement in the Affairs of this World
Blaming the Victims and Catholic Guilt

C. Errors from Mental Poverty and Intellectual Dishonesty

Argument from Inconsistent Revelation
Coercion, You may Choose but either Way You Lose
Eisegetical Interpretation of Scriptures, Sacred Texts, etc.
Claims that Conflict with Religion's Founder and History
Explaining a Mystery with Even a Greater Mystery
Speaking the "Truth" with the Doctrine of Mental Reservation
Not to Distinguish between Genuine and Institutionalized Religion
Leap of Faith--There is a Higher Truth in Subjectivity

D. The Calamitous Consequences of These Errors

Billions Will Die Before Their Time and After a Beggarly Life
Psycho-Terror Supported Protection Rackets Lead to Loss of the Self
Crippling the Minds of Children Perpetuates Pernicious Ignorance
The Degradation of Women Condemns Many to a Servile Life
The Roman Catholic Church's Ongoing Holocaust

Introduction

The fatal skepticism is not disbelief in any theological dogma. It is disbelief in the reality of truth, goodness and beauty.

Lyman Abbott (1835-1922) Protestant minister

Religious moderation has been the product of secular, this worldly, influence grounded in reason and knowledge as sparked by Enlightenment rationalism and the ideals of a secular government as enshrined for example in the U.S. Constitution.

Anonymous

This text is about the claims, teachings, and practices of large religious institutions, the world religions. It is not about the large majority of believers who practice The Common Moral Decencies and Ethical Excellences while following for the most part the dictates of commonsense and a moral conscience as it naturally evolved over millennia or even millionth of years. It is these attributes that make social living possible in spite of harmful, self-serving, intellectually immobile, institutional "religious" teachings. The multitude of the faithful, however, are enablers to the extent that they support the pernicious traditions of these institutions, and even if they do so only by lip service or by being silent.

If the errors asserted below are for the most part correct, then much of world religion may be defined as a compromise of power sharing between those who claim worldly power and those who assert spiritual authority. The rulers insisted on ownership of man's body for exploitation, and the priests demanded ownership of man's mind for thought control and the imprisonment of free-thought. To implement this rotten bargain, world religions were formed, modified, and maintained to further the self-serving interests of these parties.

The underlying criteria for the selection of religious teachings were subsequently the promotion of the objectives of rulers and priests. The result was world religions grounded in organized ignorance elevated and sanctified to a socio-psycho pathological belief system. Millions have, and billionth more will inevitably die before their time and after a beggarly life as a consequence of these atrocious absurdities. They will inevitably suffer and die because at least a thousand years of medical progress has been lost on account of the Dark Middle Ages.

The hope of this writing is that it identifies the errors where organized religion is gravely wrong. Hopefully, those concerned have the courage to admit these errors, "purify their souls," and acquire an intelligent and moral conscience. It may then serve as an ultimate guide and authority to reform their belief system.

A. Origins of Errors and Motivation for Their Acceptance

To become a world religion, its founders or their followers had to make compromises with rulers that were almost always tyrants such as the maharajahs of India, the emperors of the Roman Empire, a multitude of kings in Europe, and the caliphs in the Arabic world. The compromises turned out to be mostly pernicious for the many but self-serving for the totalitarian worldly rulers and the soon to be totalitarian spiritual rulers of the human mind and "religious" institutions. The concessions made preserved and furthered the objectives of all parties except, of course, that of the multitude:

The worldly rulers demanded that for accepting a given religion as the state's exclusive one, and for imposing it if necessary by force, the faith would have to confirm their position, and their subjects absolute obedience to them, as divinely ordained or sanctioned by some other higher power. In gratitude for religion's cooperation, the worldly rulers would then allow it to control the folk's minds thru spirituality and let the religion's hierarchy carve out the second highest position in society for itself.
The spiritual rulers obeyed, and the power-sharing alliance between the worldly and spiritual rulers, between king and altar, was completed at the expense of the multitude who was from now on exploited by the powerful and spiritually deceived and socially controlled by the priests. In the case of Western Europe, Roman Catholicism and the Roman Empire were regarded as the two arms of God in governing all of religion and all of the world.
The preaching of a slave morality would bring about social control:

by degrading this known world to elevate an unknown one;

by despising our material minds and bodies to cherish immaterial souls;

by promoting and cashing in on false guilt about original sin (in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition), prior life wrongdoing (in Hinduism and Buddhism). By declaring as sinful many harmless actions, such as perfectly natural sexual desires or eating meat on Fridays, that it becomes impossible to live without breaking these rules. These sins or sinning are then used to blame the victims of social injustice and natural conditions;

promising a blissful afterlife or better next life to further the acceptance of an undeserved, underprivileged life here and now. However, as a popular poem tells us: "To get the pie in the sky one has to die, its a lie, its a lie."

From this ancient time forward, many priests would act as antisocial organisms within the antisocial superorganism of their religious institution. Their activity would include the interpretation of all sources of knowledge, whether factual of this world or received thru spirituality, in support of the rotten, self-serving power-sharing compromise with the powerful. These interpretations turn out to be errors with pernicious consequences for the many. Calling them errors is being kind to the priestly class, for we assume that they are simply the outcome of ignorance. However, they are probably in part intentional deceptions by rogues, "raving wolves in sheep's clothing." In any case, to insist on these falsehoods millennium after millennium and in a scientific age, indicates mental poverty and an extraordinary low standard of intellectual honesty or perhaps a complete absence of it.

B. Errors from Ignorance of the Real World

I am compelled to perceive evidence where it is, or the want of evidence where it is not, so long as I retain my senses; and if my judgments fail me, it becomes a misfortune, not a sin.

Denis Diderot (1713-1784)

1. Explaining Historical, Contingent Conditions as Divinely Ordained

Contingent truth of history can never become the demonstration of necessary truth of reason.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-81)

On the other hand, to set up a philosophy which barricades the road of further advance toward the truth is the one unpardonable offence in reasoning, as it is also the one to which metaphysicians [theologians] have in all ages shown themselves the most addicted.

Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914)

The founders of religions or their followers erroneously explained historical, evolutionary conditions, situations that could have been otherwise, as divinely ordained. In other words, these people were deceived by the illusion of permanence, thinking that certain conditions were so from the beginning to the present and into the future. As we know now, these assumptions were and are still "barricades" on "the road of further advance toward the truth."

Examples of now largely abandoned but once thought permanent, divinely-ordained conditions:

The divine appointment and rights of rulers, kings, etc.
The inferiority of women.
The suffering on earth brought about by transgressions of women. For instance, Eve eating from the tree of knowledge, and Pandora opening the box (actually a jar).
Devastating diseases, such as the Black death, and suffering in general, brought about by the wrath of God.
The painful and sometimes deadly process of giving birth as punishment for Eve's original sin.
To cure diseases, eliminate pain and suffering, etc. was thought of as sinful because it was fighting God's will.
Mental illnesses were diagnosed as possessions by the devil. The cure were severe beatings to expel the evil one. This practice is continued with less harsh physical force as exorcism in the Roman Catholic Church, though people on occasion still die from it.

What is only insufficiently abandoned, and hence still very influential, is the claim of rabbis, priests, mullahs, gurus, and monks to have a source of higher or deeper knowledge in general and moral knowledge in particular. That morality originated with God or gods is an important principle of most theistic religions. There is no morality apart from their god and, in particular, apart from obedience to their god. This leads many to say non-believers cannot behave morally and/or cannot be moral. However, the evidence strongly contradicts that morality required or even could have a divine source--morality is a purely natural and human creation - it's a part of being human, not a part of some supernatural realm.

Religions' denial of the biological and cultural origins of morality has been, and still is, a devastating impediment to social progress. Broadly speaking: Religions' weakness is that they have been often wrong. Religions' strength is that they are never in doubt. They have the strength of their convictions but lack the courage to examine them.

2. Inferring Essence or the Soul from Contingent Facts

Nature, which includes humankind, is still in the making. Hence, "there is now a conception of nature which no longer seeks to derive and explain becoming from being, but being from becoming."

Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945)

Many religions have searched for or described the essence or soul of humankind thought to be divinely created in the image of God. The soul is thought to be immortal and the principle of life, feeling, emotions, thought, willing, and action in humans. Also, she is regarded as a distinct entity separate from the body--commonly held to be separable in existence from the body--the spiritual part of humans as distinct from the physical part.

According to theologians, it is this inner essence or soul that makes humans what they are. Rather than the brain or any other material or natural part of the body, it manifests itself as the true basis for sapience, that is, intelligence, erudition, and insight as well as the ability to acquire knowledge, wisdom, and make judgments. Souls are believed to continue their existence in the afterlife mainly in the Christian-Islamic tradition. In the Hindu-Buddhist religions, the soul exists prior to incarnation in some, but in others it dies but another soul appears when a person is reincarnated.

These knowledge claims by religions concerning the inward nature, true substance, or constitution of humankind, as opposed to what is accidental, phenomenal, illusory, etc., have yielded extraordinary powers over people for them. They assert "to be saved" for a better next life we must live according to the demands of this essence as it is revealed to them or found in meditating.

However, there is no unchanging essence or soul in humans to be found. Instead, we are still becoming within the limits of our potential and means available. What they call essence, has actually evolved over long periods of time. It is the still changing product of evolution and culture. When an individual says "I" he or she refers to the sum or bundle of experiences that change over the lifetime of the person. The search for the essence of humankind is a hopeless quest, and to claim to have it found is a foolish fancy. and the same goes for other beings, for as Darwin's evolutionary biology demonstrates, organisms do not have fixed essences that forever determine their destinies.

3. Disconnecting Important Claims from Reality

This is probably the priests most powerful tool. For example, the claim that "after a person's loss of life his or her immaterial and immortal soul will transmigrates to a supernatural realm where God will sit in judgment upon it" is completely disconnected from our reality- experiencing senses, so it is humanly unverifiable.

Another example is from the religious philosopher Kant (1724-1804) who extracts from pure reason that there is: "God, freedom [of the will], and immortality." These claims have the ring of an enduring truthfulness, and this is one of the major reasons why so many believe in them. Created from pure reason, there is no objective--real world-- and thus no contingent truth that could be investigated; hence, we must ask what makes their assertions seemingly superior?

The classical analysis comes from a philosopher of science, Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970), who refers to these subjective creators as metaphysicians. He suggests that it is a clever, time-honored ploy and points out:

Metaphysicians cannot avoid making their propositions [claims] non-verifiable, because if they made them verifiable, the decisions about the truth or falsehood of their doctrines would depend on experience and therefore belong to the region of empirical science. Thus they are compelled to cut all connections between their propositions and experience; and precisely by this procedure deprive them of any sense (in Philosophy and Logical Syntax (London, 1935).

So, the appearance of eternal veracity is grounded in something beyond sense experience--it cannot be found out to be false. Therefore, it is an unassailable assertion, that is, it is non-sensical and at least in a technical sense, nonsense.

Again, these claims are weak or even ridiculous because humans, including priests, are natural beings with no capacity to sense the unreal, immaterial, or supernatural. These assertions overreach human comprehension and verifiability, hence, skepticism or even denial is appropriate. Moreover, the burden of proof is with those who make these claims, and the priests have so far failed to do so plausibly because it is humanly not possible.

4. Explaining the Mysterious with the Occult

It removes mysterious claims from ever being explained by making them occult. What is mysterious at a given time is simply not yet explained. However, what is occult demands explanation in terms wholly inaccessible to sensory experience.

5. Folklores Sanctified as Sacred Scriptures

The term "folklore" covers all of the unwritten traditional beliefs, legends, sayings, customs, etc. of a culture. Moreover, these oral stories have often multiple existence and variation. As one expert, Alan Dundes*, reports, the Bible clearly manifests these distinctive criteria and he lists multiple versions of various stories that appear in the Bible. A few examples are:

The creation of the first woman: one story in Genesis has her created at the same time as the first man; the second story has God creating her later.
The flood of Noah: Much of Genesis 7 consists of an interleaving of flood accounts by authors referred to as "J" and "P." Alternative verses are by different authors.
The Ten Commandments which appear in three different versions in the Pentateuch,
The names of the twelve tribes of Israel,
The names of Jesus' disciples,
Jesus' Sermon on the Mount or Plain,
The Lord's prayer,
The various inscriptions on the sign on placed on the cross, as described by various gospel writers.

Dundes believes that these stories were circulated for decades and even centuries as an oral tradition. During that time, each version of the stories subtlety changed as it was circulated before it was recorded in written form. From the discrepancies among the various version of the same story, he concluded not only that the Bible contains folklore, but that the Bible is folklore.

And since the life stories of Hinduism's Krishna, Buddhism's Buddha, and Christianity's Christ are almost identical, it is safe to assume that all the scriptures of the world religions are for the most part folklore. This is buttressed by the fact that there is no other plausible or verifiable explanation.

*Alan Dundes is a professor of anthropology and folklore at the University of California. He has written over 30 books based on his studies of the oral traditions of many cultures. In his book called: "Holy writ as oral lit. The Bible as folklore," he reports that multiple versions of various stories appear in the Bible.

6. Superstitious Beliefs are generally defined as being based on fear or ignorance that is inconsistent with the known laws of science or with what is generally considered in the particular society as true and rational. Religious practices are most likely to be labeled "superstitious" by outsiders when they include belief in extraordinary events such as miracles and other supernatural interventions, afterlife, reincarnation, apparitions or the efficacy of prayer, charms, incantations, and prophecies. Typically, religious believers often describe other religions as superstitious. Edmund Burke (1729-97) said, "Superstition is the religion of feeble minds."

The ancient Greeks and Romans scorned the man who constantly trembled with fear at the thought of the gods, as a slave feared a cruel and capricious master. "Such fear of the gods (deisidaimonia) was what the Romans meant by "superstition." Early Christianity was outlawed as a "Jewish superstition" (superstition Judaica) by the Roman emperor Domitian (reign 81-96 CE). However, by 425 CE, the Roman emperor Theodosius II (408-450 CE) outlawed pagan traditions as superstitious.

So, one person's superstition is another one's religion and vice versa. Buddhists consider the law of Karma and Reincarnation as an observable fact o nature, while Christians think it is a superstition. Christians, on the other hand, think that the Eucharist, the conversion of bread and wine into the flesh and blood of Christ is a miraculous fact, while others think of it as superstitious cannibalistic ritual.

7. Supernatural Involvement in the Affairs of this World

This, the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition claims, is an ongoing engagement by an all-powerful and all-good God. He, God, is aware of even the smallest details here on Earth, like He knows "the number of hair on our head" (Mathew 10:30), and since nothing happens without his permission, "not even a sparrow can fall to the ground" (Mathew 10:29). Yes, they acknowledge, there is much injustice and suffering in this world, and why God allows it, they assert is a mystery. But they promise that justice will be done in the afterlife where the unfortunate will be compensated. This wretched explanation was and still is the cause for a disabling learned helplessness (see Where Thinking Goes Wrong) that pervaded much of the Dark Middle Ages and is still found in our time.

8. Blaming the Victims and the Creation of Guilt

They still blame the victims of suffering for their misfortunes that are actually due to evolutionary, historical, and man-made conditions. This is a malicious diversion that conceals underlying causes such as unjust social systems and its beneficiaries, the worldly and spiritual elite.

In the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, the claim is that suffering is God's punishment on account of original sin or human sinfulness in general.
The dogma of Karma serves a like purpose in Buddhism and Hinduism. Karma consists of a person’s acts and their ethical consequences--you reap what you sow. Human actions lead to rebirth, wherein good deeds are inevitably rewarded and evil deeds are punished.
It follows that neither undeserved pleasure nor unwarranted suffering exists in the world, but rather a universal justice. A low social status is the inevitable result of sins in a former life but can, by virtue and merit, be followed by a better position in the next existence.
Moreover, one’s karma determines such matters as one’s species, beauty, intelligence, longevity, wealth, and social status. According to the Buddha, karma of varying types can lead to rebirth as a human, an animal, a hungry ghost, a denizen of hell, or even one of the Hindu gods.

Also, the blaming perpetrators often hate their victims because they make them feel guilty. This is most obvious in the case of women as exemplified by an ongoing misogyny.

Concerning the creation of guilt, the Roman Catholic Church reigns supreme among the world's religions. Michele Catalano (b.1962) states it concisely:

Catholic Guilt, a major legacy of much misguided indoctrination applied to young and defenseless Catholics, mainly in parochial schools. Stripped of its subtleties, Catholic Guilt is what comes the inculcation of the notion that one is supposed to suffer in this world to earn one's place in the next. Suffering here is meant to include not merely pain, fatigue, and discomfort, but also the renunciation, voluntary or otherwise, of the pleasures offered us by the world.

C. Errors from Mental Poverty and Intellectual Dishonesty

Doubts in religious matters, far from being blamable far from being acts of impiety, ought to be regarded as praiseworthy, when they proceed from a man who humbly acknowledges his ignorance, and arise from the fear of offending God by the abuse of reason.

Denis Diderot (1713-1784)

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

There are people who want to make men's lives more difficult for no other reason than the chance it provides them afterwards to offer their prescription for alleviating life; their Christianity, for instance.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

When language first entered history its masters were already priests and sorcerers. Anyone who affronted the symbols fell prey in the name of unearthly powers to the earthly ones, represented by these appointed organs of society. What preceded that stage is shrouded in darkness.

M. Horkheimer (1895-1973) and T. W. Adorno (1903-69)

1. Argument from Inconsistent Revelation

Revelation as a source of true or plausible knowledge is discredited because it has produced conflicting and mutually exclusive statements. Moreover, even if these detrimental flaws would not exist, revelation is at best a communication to one individual--to everybody else it is just hearsay. Also, the individual cannot be sure who the revealer is. It may be a spouse, a neighbor, or some other prankster.

The books of the Bible, for instance, contain many textual inconsistencies, contradictions, and unfulfilled prophecies. One prophecy by Christ was that the Kingdom of God here on earth was imminent. Ever since Christians have traditionally awaited the Second Coming as an event to occur in the more or less immediate future. They have expected this to happen in their own lifetime for the past 2000 years. Every few months there are false prophets who tell us that the signs of the times point to its impending occurrence.

2. Coercion, You may Choose but either Way You Lose

The dogma of eternal punishment is the offspring of folly, of atrocity, and of blasphemy. If God will punish eternally, what proportion exists between the offense and the chastisement? If he punish for his own satisfaction, he becomes a monster of barbarity; if he punish to correct others, his rigor is useless for those who are not witnesses of it.

Denis Diderot (1713-1784)

Coercion is analogous to the carrot or the stick choice except that the carrot is poisoned. But why would people cooperate in significant matters when they are bound to suffer no matter what they choose. The answer is that in many cases the verb "cooperate" is a misnomer, for they are being as the Germans say "freiwillig gezwungen," that is, voluntarily coerced.

As Timo Airaksinen in his Ethics of Coercion and Authority: A Philosophical Study of Social Life (1988) explains, in many crucial interactions, there are typically some agents that do not want any cooperative solutions, for they have the coercive power to get superior results at the expense of the coerced. Airaksinen’s central suggestion is that:

Coercion logically entails that whatever the victim does, he will suffer or lose something. But if he does as told, his losses will be smaller. The coercer is supposed to profit from this compliance. There are three main points concerning coercion:

The victim will lose whatever he does.
This is because of the coercer’s threat.
However, the victim can minimize his losses by obeying.

In the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions, rabbis, priests, and mullahs speak on behalf of God. These self-appointed representatives of the divine offer two choices, namely, heavenly bliss or hellish torment for all eternity. Now, nobody wants to go to hell. But for the entry ticket to heaven there is a heavy price to pay. One must subordinate reason to faith and facts to clerical revelations. And in the process one loses one’s dignity and freedom when shackled by religious conventions. Thus, to avoid the worst scenario, one has to participate in a shameful protection racket that is grounded in the pathetic imagination of our pre-scientific and ignorant ancestors.

In the tradition of Hinduism and Buddhism, gurus and monks speak on behalf of an ultimate truth that was found by sages of the past in the depth of an other-than-the-sensory world. Here the coercive threat is: follow our--self-serving--"moral" rules or you may be reincarnated in a lower social status or even as a dog, swarm of mosquitoes, etc. Again, this is a shameful protection racket that is grounded in the pathetic imagination of our pre-scientific and ignorant ancestors.

3. Eisegetical Interpretation of Scriptures, Sacred Texts, etc.

Eisegetical Thinking permits the eisegete to read his own ideas into a text and get them back endowed with authority. The priests of the world religions are masterful practitioner of this craft. For instance, the eisegete asserts "the scriptures, holy text, etc. say . . . . This means . . . (stating his idea, bias, or the like, rather than the meaning of the text.)" Thus by reading his own ideas into the text, he gets them back endowed with authority and passes them on to the faithful.

W. A. Kaufmann (1921-80) elucidates:

The eisegetical* thinker avoids standing by himself and saying what he thinks; for he might be wrong and would not know what to say if others followed his example and said what they thought. Such a situation would call for the evaluation of alternatives and invite the use of reason an the assessment of evidence. He is suspicious of reason and associates evidence with science and positivism. There would be no telling in advance where the argument might lead. Moreover, the result would be provisional, pending further evidence and argument. Confronted with the prospect of acrophobia, the exegetical thinker looks for a prop, for something to lean on. Being a man of words, he finds a text.

*Kaufmann uses incorrectly the term exegetical.

4. Claims that Conflict with Religion's Founder and History

These claims depend on taking certain, often unverified, historical events on which the religion is founded, and reinterpreting them by theological speculation or a very full imagination, to produce, for instance, the dogma of papal supremacy according to which Christ is believed to have given final authority over the entire Christian church to the bishops of Rome as successors of St. Peter.

5. Explaining a Mystery with Even a Greater Mystery

Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

There is security in obscurity, profundity in opacity, and insightfulness in murkiness.

This writer

Explaining the Obscure with the More Obscure (obscurum per obscurius) refers to an explanation which is even more obscure than the thing it purports to explain. Hence, it is the defect in any account that proves more difficult to understand than that what it claims to clarify. Theologians, see "God of Gaps" below, use this kind of obscurantism when they simply do not have a sensible explanation. The poet Byron (1788-1824) complaint about this problem in the writings of Coleridge (1772-1834):

But, like a hawk encumbered with his hood,
Explaining metaphysics to the nation—
I wish he would explain his explanation.

This fallacy is sometimes called Ignotum Per Ignotius, literally meaning (explaining) "the unknown by the more unknown." Others refer to this activity as "mystery mongering." And those who produce these wild speculations are known as "mysterians."

God of the Gaps is a hostile, derogatory phrase that characterizes theories appealing to the concept of God to explain anything science currently finds inexplicable, for example, the origins of life, details of the evolutionary mechanism, or of consciousness. Even theologians, now and generally, regard such assertions as creating only the illusion of an explanation that provides no valid basis or support for a belief in God.

Within the traditional theistic view of God as existing in a realm "beyond nature", as science progresses to explain more and more, the perceived scope of the role of God and other "supernatural" phenomena has shrank considerably as a result.

6. Speaking the "Truth" with the Doctrine of Mental Reservation

This doctrine allows its practitioner to lie to others without sinning because it allows him to remain truthful to God. These people believe that if they something aloud, lets say in court, but another silently to themselves, then this is not lying. For example, a person with strong religious convictions would have a problem swearing allegiance to a government or constitution he or she considers hostile to the faith. Hence, the oath taker says whatever is required aloud, but another silently to himself, that is, he mentally reserves it to himself. And since God can read his mind, He is therefore not lied to.

When Catholic Italians had a problem swearing loyalty to the Fascist government of Mussolini, Pope Pius XI recommended to add the mental reservation "excepting the laws of God and the Church." This way, promises may be evaded or infringed on. To avoid his hypocrisy, some oath require now that the phrase "without mental reservation or purpose of evasion" be added to some oath.

7. Not to Distinguish between Genuine and Institutionalized Religion

Genuine religion is found among the laity and perhaps the original founders of religions. It is "purely and solely the fruit of a morally good heart . . ; it originates entirely from the wish of the good heart that the good in the world should triumph over evil." Moreover, it is the rational and humane quest for plausible explanations and a dependable guide for the life of individuals and the community. A quest is rational when it draws valid inferences from true or plausible information. And it is humane when it uses the best and noblest qualities human beings are capable of. These traits urge us to advance what is good and right and oppose what is bad and wrong.

Institutionalized religion, by contrast and as evidenced by its history, is altered genuine religion to satisfy demands by rulers to legitimate their power, facilitate social control, and to promote the growth and power of the institution. As the theologian Ben F. Kimpel (1905-?) correctly points out:

Institutionalized religion is a product of human effort, and therefore it is always subject to the limitations of human culture. It is from the unworthy features of such limitations, however, that the religious quest itself seeks to liberate human life. Consequently, if the very goal of the religious search is not to be defeated by an institution developed to assist in the search, institutions must themselves be subjected to earnest scrutiny.

For example, in the New Testament part of the Bible, the learned Pharisees declared that "this man [Jesus] is not of God, because he keepeth not the Sabbath day" (John 9:16). But as the above theologian warns:

The criterion by which the Pharisees evaluated the authority of Jesus was institutional: it was the meaning which the Sabbath had in the religious culture of the day. Hence when Jesus challenged the institutional interpretation of the observances of the Sabbath, the Sabbath as interpreted by the institution was itself challenged as the criterion for religious life. This incident illustrates the fundamental problem confronting religious life when religious interpretations become the criteria of what is warranted religious faith. When a belief which is endorsed by an institution becomes the criterion by which all religious faith is measured, the religious institution may itself become an obstacle in man's religious quest (1952).

As pointed out elsewhere, but worth of repeating, for religions to preserve their own identity over time, they had to endorse their choice of belief as authorized canons: in laws, a body of rules, standards, and principles, as well as a selection of texts such as the officially accepted books of the Bible, the sacred scriptures of Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. These institutional canons became the determinators of divine or dharmic truth. However, the real problem is to ascertain what the canons, texts, etc. itself ought to be, because as our theologian explains:

Institutions and their canons, texts, etc., are the "product of human effort, and therefore are always subject to limitations of human culture. It is from the unworthy features of such limitations, however, that the religious quest itself seeks to liberate human life. Consequently, if the very goal of the religious search is not to be defeated by an institution developed to assist in the search, institutions must themselves be subject to earnest scrutiny. [Hence,] an institutional canon of belief constitutes a grave problem for earnest religious life, . . . .

The other major difference between genuine and institutionalized religion is their foundation of knowledge. Genuine religion relies substantially on human reason and observation of the the empirical world--the world here and now. While, institutionalized religion relies heavily on revelations from meditations and other states of altered consciousness while being in touch with authorities from another world or a deeper, not accessible by the senses, world. Some even claim that their leaders are infallible in their pronouncements of dogmas.

8. Leap of Faith--There is a Higher Truth in Subjectivity

Subjectivists, such as fideists, point out that it is a defect of "scientism" or scientific philosophy to recognize only one type of truth, the type scientists call "objective truth." They, on the other hand, claim that there is also subjective truth, and that this is a higher truth because as Kierkegaard (1813-55) asserts there is "more truth" in being subjectively in the truth than in being objectively in the truth. Paul Edwards (1923-2004) critiques this assumption, and demonstrates that in the last analysis the Kierkegaardian argument cannot succeed without being subject to objective criteria.

Kierkegaard asks in Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1941) "is the hour and a half I have to live with men, what but a brief instant compared with eternity?" And he comments what may happen to him if he were to use an inappropriate means such as objectivity in his search for God:

But woe unto me if the Deity were to condemn me in my most inward man for the fact that I wanted mendaciously to be systematic and world-historical, and to forget what it is to be a man, and therewith forget what it means that He is the Deity. Woe unto me. Woe unto me in time, and still more dreadfully when He gets hold of me in eternity! (1941, 163)

Then, a few pages later, he indicates that he has found a method that shows "on which side there is the most truth," and thus he can tell who is worshipping the true God and who is merely worshipping an idol:

When the problem is to reckon up on which side there is most truth, whether on the side of one who seeks the true God objectively, and pursues the approximate truth of the God-idea; or on the side of one who, driven by the infinite passion of his need of God, feels an infinite concern for his own relationship to God in truth . . . the answer cannot be in doubt for anyone who has not been demoralized with the aid of science (1941, 179).

Kierkegaard, however, realizes that if the strength of inwardness, for example, his "infinite passion of his need of God" is the criteria for truth, then this may have chaotic implications. For many other religions, beliefs or ideologies may arouse a similar passion and have thus a claim to have as much truth. He meets this objection when he claims that Christianity, and in particular the doctrine of the incarnation, is the most absurd concept in existence and therefore nothing else can excite a higher passion of inwardness. He asserts:

Faith is the objective uncertainty due to the repulsion of the absurd held fast by the passion of inwardness, which in this instance is intensified to the utmost degree. This formula fits only the believer, no one else, not a lover, not an enthusiast, not a thinker, but simply and solely the believer who is related to the absolute paradox (1941, 540).

It follows that Kierkegaard needs another criteria that will distinguish the truly highest passion of inwardness from the fallaciously assumed highest passion of inwardness.

He observes that we must distinguish the "genuine inwardness" of the religious believer from the "aberrant inwardness" of all others. It is only the religious believer who is concerned with the infinite and perfect, presumably Christian, God, but all others are concerned with something finite and imperfect. In other words, though others may also have an infinite concern, nevertheless, it is inappropriate because objective evidence demonstrates that in fact these objects are finite and of no great concern. But as Edwards points out:

. . . if the door is once opened to objective evidence then any evidence that atheists and other unbelievers might be able to bring up against what the Christian believes in can no longer be ruled out as irrelevant. We can now regard a person as in the truth only if, in addition to feeling infinite concern, it is also the case that the object or objects appropriate to this infinite concern do in fact exist. The distinction between genuine and aberrant inwardness, in other words, destroys the believer’s immunity from rational criticism that Kierkegaard’s doctrine was supposed to secure (A Modern Introduction to Philosophy, 1973, p.522).

D. The Calamitous Consequences of These Errors

There is nothing more terrible than ignorance in action.

Goethe (1749-1832)

1. Billions Will Die Before Their Time and After a Beggarly Life

Among the harmful religious traditions, the self-perpetuating ignorance in child education, guarded by "bamboozled bamboozlers," see below, is the most pernicious one. These ancient, closed to improvement, systems have impeded or completely blocked progress in all fields of inquiry, the science, and technology. At least a thousand years of research and corresponding advance has been lost to this brutal stupidity. No more is this self-evident than in connection with a quality life and in the medical field. As C. P. Snow (1905-1980) observed:

. . . deep-natured men know, as starkly as any men have known, that the individual human condition is tragic; for all its triumphs and joys, the essence of it is loneliness and the end is death. But what they will not admit is that, because the individual condition is tragic, therefore the social condition must be tragic, too. Because a man must die, that is no excuse for his dying before his time and after a servile life.

Millions have, and billionth more will inevitably die before their time and after a docile and paltry life as a consequence of progress-impeding, thus, atrocious absurdities. This will inevitably affect all now living if not directly, then due to the suffering inflicted by the pain and premature death of a loved one or that of humanity in general.

By progress lost, I refer primarily to the Dark Middle Ages and the destruction of two advanced ancient cultures, the Greek and the Roman civilizations. For example, the Royal Library of Alexandria, founded in 300 BCE, was once the largest library in the world. Although the historical data is subject to controversy, it appears that there were at least two destructions, one incomplete and the other finally complete. The first was by decree of Pope Theophilus of Alexandria in 391 (at that time all bishops were called popes or papa). The second and final destruction occurred after the conquest by Islamic forces in 642 or thereafter. Concerning books and philosophical schools, the Christian and Islamic fanatics simply asked: "Do they agree with our sacred texts? If yes, then we do not need them, and if no, then we do not want them, so destroy them!"

2. Psycho-Terror Supported Protection Rackets Lead to Loss of the Self

We no sooner refuse to believe on the bare word of a priest, than he endeavors to frighten us; but the terror he excites in us is not a convincing argument, neither can fear be a motive of credibility. Believe, or you will be damned. This is the strongest argument in Theology.

Denis Diderot (1713-1784)

"Sins" are indispensable to every society organized on an ecclesiastical basis; they are the only reliable weapons of power; the priest lives upon sins; it is necessary to him that there be "sinning."

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

When you act out of fear, there is no moral judgment made by you.

As Ayn Rand observed in For the New Intellectual:

For centuries, the mystics of spirit had existed by running a protection racket - by making life on earth unbearable, then charging you for consolation and relief, by forbidding all the virtues that make existence possible, then riding on the shoulders of your guilt, by declaring production and joy to be sins, then collecting blackmail from the sinners.

and in Atlas Shrugged, she insists:

. . . if devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.... the alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind.

Psycho-terror in the name of religion, then and now, leads by the many, children and adults, to a failure of nerves. They literally concede their ability to think for themselves to their religion. Depending on the culture they live in, they become Christians believing in Christ, Muslims affirming Allah, Hindus having faith in Brahman and the other gods of their trinity, Buddhists having confidence in the Law of Karma and reincarnation, etc.

The believer must sacrifice his most cherished personal interests to appease the gods of the priests. If he or she is a member of any organized religion, then this individual must:

First, choose to satisfy his God's wishes as transmitted to him by the priests who claim to be the mouthpieces of God or gods.

Second, fulfill the needs and expectations of the priests, mullahs, or gurus of his religion.

Third, only then may he act on his own views and preferences and provided they are not contrary or offensive to his God or religion. And

Fourth, as the psychologist Albert Ellis points out, this leads to a loss of the self because:

In a sense, the religious person must have no real views of his own; and it is presumptuous of him, in fact, to have any. In regard to sex-love affairs, to marriage and family relations, to business, to politics, and to virtually everything else that is important in his life, he must try to discover what his god and his clergy would like him to do; and he must primarily do their bidding.

Fifth, support evil governments and dictators such as recently Hitler's, Mussolini's, and Franco's, and earlier the ruling tyrants of the Dark Middle Ages. For believers were forced under the threat of damnation to accept these dictators. St. Paul (Romans 13:1-2):

Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but that of God: the powers that be are ordained by God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the power of God; and they that resisteth shall receive to themselves damnation.

3. Crippling the Minds of Children Perpetuates Pernicious Ignorance

This is most probably the main cause why our 21st century civilizations have not yet evolved out of the "predatory phase of human development," which consists mainly of mental deprivation to facilitate exploitation. For an understanding of this phenomenon go to that part in Abuse of Children in Religions.

4. The Degradation of Women Condemns Many to a Servile Life

The world religions still treat over fifty percent of humanity, namely, women as inferior by assigning them lower roles in life and religion. This is an enduring cause for the suffering and carnage among hundreds of millions of women particularly in the developing world. However, the psychological abuse is universal. Besides being irrelevant, it is ugly and pernicious to invoke the male sex organ as a proof of superiority. This topic has been expounded in a separate chapter on account of its widespread negative impact. Go to Hatred of Women in Religions.

5. The Roman Catholic Church's Ongoing Holocaust

Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind.

And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

Jesus of Nazareth (Matthew 15:14)

In promoting a perfect, blissful other-worldliness, the Roman Catholic Church is degrading this world by, among other things, her hostility to life here and now. This hatred surfaces in many areas such as in her abuse of children and women, family planning, education, health care, social politics, and all versions of religion and spirituality other than her own. Here, the Church is on common ground with other world religions, and it has been explained above.

However, the Roman Catholic Church's opposition to the means of effective family planning stands out on account of the millionth of death, diseases, injuries, and suffering it causes. Hence, it is imperative to highlight this culture of death and suffering in this separate section.

Here are the consequences of the Church's opposition to terminating unwanted pregnancies, and ironically, her opposition to prevent pregnancies thru effective birth control such as the use of condoms. According to data from the United Nations:

Lack of access to family planning has pernicious outcomes

It is the major factor behind the 76 million unintended pregnancies every year in the developing world alone.
Unintended pregnancies lead to 19 million annual unsafe abortions, causing some 68,000 deaths in the developing world. More than half of women seeking abortions are married with children.
For every woman who dies, roughly 20 more suffer serious injury or disability, that is, 1,360,000 on account of unsafe abortions.
The World Health Organization estimates that 585,000 women die each year during pregnancy and childbirth.
"The death toll" above, according to World Watch, "underestimates the magnitude of the problem. For every maternal death as many as thirty women sustain crippling and life-long health problems related to pregnancy [seventeen million].” Many of these deaths and life-long health problems could have been prevented by access to family planning services and safe, legal abortions.
A mother's death is often devastating to the children left behind, who become vulnerable to poor health, poverty and exploitation without a mother's love and protection.
A mother's disability diminishes her contributions to both the family and the economy in the struggle against poverty.
Lack of family planning and unsafe abortions affects mainly the poor. The rich or better- off in society have their private physicians or can go to neighboring states or countries for these services.

Studies show that access to safe and effective contraception together with effective sex education reduces the incidence of induced abortion. For instance, in several countries of Central and Eastern Europe, abortion rates declined rapidly with the establishment of family planning services and an increase in the availability of contraception. In Romania, for example, abortion rates dropped dramatically from 52 to 11 per 1,000 women (aged 15 to 44) between 1995 and 1999. And it is not just fetuses that are affected by this culture of death. As another result of the Vatican’s objection to the use of condoms as part of worldwide family planning:

The widespread use of condoms would have drastically reduced:

Men, women, and children living with HIV or AIDS .... 39.5 million.

New HIV infections in 2006 ......... 4.3 million.

Deaths due to AIDS in 2006 .......... 2.9 million.

In nine African nations U.N. AIDS found that one-fifth to one-third of the children are likely to be orphaned by AIDS over the next decade. By 2010 Africa could be home to 40 million AIDS orphans.

18.8 million have already died of AIDS.

12 million new cases of syphilis each year.

89 million of chlamydia, a gonorrhea-like venereal disease, each year.

62 million of gonorrhea, a venereal disease, each year.

170 million of trichomoniasis, a type of vaginitis, each year.

With all of these diseases, women would mostly benefit since they are at greater risk of getting infected.

Mandatory pregnancy if there is no choice to terminate

Driven by religious-ethical concerns, those who hold a "pro-life" ideology want to impose their views on others and outlaw abortion. They are opposed by those who take a "pro-choice" stance who want to leave the decision to terminate or not to terminate to the individual women. The "pro-life" outlaw abortion movement in the United Nations, the United States, and other countries is mainly driven by the Roman Church. However, the moral indignation of this all-male hierarchy, who refuses any and all responsibilities to raise a family, is largely misplaced when we take a look at all terminated pregnancies. As it turns out, the Church and the "pro-lifers" are barking up the wrong tree. Let us draw some conclusions from the following facts:

The Church teaches that the fertilized ovum (egg), no matter how microscopic, represents the human life of a person with all the rights and privileges thereof. They base this on the belief that "ensoulment" (to endow with a soul) takes place at the time of conception. Hence, they conclude, terminating the fertilized ovum at this or a later stage is murder.
Around the world, there are an estimated 210 million pregnancies a year. However, studies show that 30-50 percent of fertilized ova are lost before a women finds out she is pregnant, for they happen so early that she goes on to get her period on time. So, taking the average figure of 40 percent fertilized ova loss, we need 350 million fertilizations to yield 210 million pregnancies. This is a staggering natural loss or "murder" by the Intelligent Designer of 140 million.
Then, of the 210 million detected pregnancies about 20 percent end in miscarriages. Specifically, this doesn't include situations in which fertilized ova is lost before a positive pregnancy test (see above). This is another significant natural loss or "murder" by the intelligent Designer of 42 million. This does not include stillbirth after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
So, out of 350 million fertilized ova only 168 million or 48 percent survive naturally or by design.
22 percent, 46 million, of the 210 million detected pregnancies end in induced abortions.

Conclusion: The Roman Church and "pro-lifers" attack the most innocent

The 46 million of induced terminations, often for good reasons, are only a fraction of the 182 million that occur naturally outside human control but under God's. But how can this Holocaust of 182 million potential humans happen though God is aware of even the smallest details here on Earth, like He knows "the number of hair on our head" (Mathew 10:30), and since nothing happens without his permission, "not even a sparrow can fall to the ground" (Mathew 10:29). Doesn't this fact contradict the claim that there is an Intelligent Designer or that God cares for human lives? Moreover, if He cares why do all creatures have to die?

Instead of attacking the reproductive rights of poor women, the "pro-lifers" and the Roman Church should direct their moral indignation to their idea of God, the all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful, who could easily stop this carnage. And while talking to God, they should also demand that there is an end to the suffering caused by the 8 million birth defects that occur annually worldwide. Finally, the Church's stance against effective birth control and abortion is apparently politically and not morally motivated. They want to gain a numerical advantage over their religious and political competition. As one observer notes:

More and more persons are now seeing that the Roman Catholic church's battle against birth control information, abortion, and sexual expression and its emphasis on "family values," is simply the regulation of sex so that all sexual activity will lead to procreation. This is part of the goal of the Roman Catholic church to win over the world ["If you can't beat them, outbreed them"].

And Uta Ranke-Heinemann (born 1927), the first ever female Catholic professor of theology*. In a letter to the SPIEGEL ONLINE, she accuses Benedict XVI of "crimes against humanity when he deliberately misleads with deadly consequences" [e.g., his doctrines on birth control and abortion]:

I accuse him of being responsible for the sickness and death of many human beings.

And she demands that the Vatican:

finances medical care for all wives so affected and compensates the family

*She was relieved of her teaching position by the Church for her persistent doubting of the virgin birth. Later, she was declared a heretic and excommunicated on account of her writings.