![]() "Now the birth of Jesus Christ was in this wise.In each case I can say absolutely, and can give my reasons, why I would feel immediately threatened if I thought that the group of men approaching me in the dusk were coming from a religious observance." "Just to stay within the letter 'B,' I have actually had that experience in Belfast, Beirut, Bombay, Belgrade, Bethlehem, and Baghdad. But I was able to answer it as if it were not hypothetical. Now-would I feel safer, or less safe, if I was to learn that they were just coming from a prayer meeting? As the reader will see, this is not a question to which a yes/no answer can be given. Toward me I was to imagine that I saw a large group of men approaching. I was to imagine myself in a strange city as the evening was coming on. He challenged me in public to answer what he called a "straight yes/no question," and I happily agreed. A week before the events of September 11, 2001, I was on a panel with Dennis Prager, who is one of America's better-known religious broadcasters.And it does not have the confidence in its own various preachings even to allow coexistence between different faiths. It may speak about the bliss of the next world, but it wants power in this one. It must seek to interfere with the lives of nonbelievers, or heretics, or adherents of other faiths. The level of intensity fluctuates according to time and place, but it can be stated as a truth with its own marvelous claims and sublime assurances.It may be a long farewell, but it has begun and, like all farewells, should not be protracted. The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did. I shall simply say that those who offer false consolation are false friends.Evolution has meant that our prefrontal lobes are too small, our adrenal glands are too big, and our reproductive organs apparently designed by committee a recipe which, alone or in combination, is very certain to lead to some unhappiness and disorder.In the very recent past, we have seen the Church of Rome befouled by its complicity with the unpardonable sin of child rape, or, as it might be phrased in Latin form, "no child's behind left.". ![]() If Jesus could heal a blind person he happened to meet, then why not heal blindness?.Why, if God was the creator of all things, were we supposed to "praise" him for what came naturally?.1.17 Chapter Nineteen: In Conclusion: The Need for a New Enlightenment.1.16 Chapter Eighteen: A Finer Tradition: The Resistance Of The Rational.1.15 Chapter Seventeen: An Objection Anticipated.1.14 Chapter Sixteen: Is Religion Child Abuse?.1.13 Chapter Fifteen: Religion As An Original Sin.1.12 Chapter Thirteen: Does Religion Make People Behave Better?.1.11 Chapter Eleven: Religion's Corrupt Beginnings.1.10 Chapter Ten: The Tawdriness Of The Miraculous And The Decline Of Hell.1.9 Chapter Nine: The Koran Is Borrowed From Both Jewish and Christian Myths.1.8 Chapter Eight: The "New" Testament Exceeds The Evil Of The "Old" One.1.7 Chapter Seven: The Nightmare Of The Old Testament. ![]()
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