WOODEN SHIPS ON A LAKE OF FIRE

I just got a message from an evangelical Christian SU member declaring that my ideas about the universe are “false teachings”. Really? Now I feel like ranting about organized religion for just a minute, before we all return to our foundations built on the rock.

Do you remember who taught you each of the ideas you believe? Do you remember the supporting evidence for each of those ideas? Do you study your religious beliefs the way a scientist might study chemistry? Scientists explore the unknown by separating it from the known. Do you do that too, when you study?

Many children learn religion from unschooled sources. I remember the movie “The Ten Commandments”, and the scene where Charlton Heston comes down from Mt. Sinai and sees the chosen people drinking and dancing and presumably copping a feel while a giant obscene golden cow replaces everything they ever believed. Why did that look like so much fun to me at 10 years old? Until I grew up and had a few good times like those in the movie, I didn’t know how much pleasure could be in sin. And as a kid, I hated to see all those folks tossed into the ground, but they didn’t obey God and that is what happens. I was learning religion.

As I grew older and studied religion I found it fascinating. I began to see that religion is mostly a political organization, fueled by money and lies. Most of the front line pastors I met seemed either dumb as a lamb to me, or like sleazy politicians or crooked businessmen. When I met right wing religious leadership, it was a mind blowing experience.

As an adult I learned when discussing religion with folks, most people could have just said, “Don’t confuse me with the facts”, and saved both of us time. Once, I saw a book at a used bookstore about Dinosaurs, written by a pastor for Christian children everywhere. The author was proud to tell kids that the truth about Dinosaurs is they were either mostly friendly or really slow, so our ideas about big giant killers ruling the earth are blown way out of proportion. Then he explained to kids the earth is only 6,000 years old, not billions of years old. He explained that God has changed the way the earth ages, so what seems like billions of years is actually about 6,000 years. Then he wrote that scientists are lying to them about the earth being billions of years old.

Do we really want to go there? Can Jesus rise only on a 6,000 year old earth? Maybe that author could also tell the kids that hell is full of hungry dinosaurs who will eat them. If I was a dinosaur I would be pissed to know that I am a big fluffy stupid animal that didn’t make the cut on Noah’s ark and that the universe is nothing but a dirty little trick God is playing on scientists so that people will love him.

Thanks to organized religion in America, we see dumber and dumber people all around us. They couldn’t care less if they learn any truth, they just want to feel safe and saved, and are happy to pay for it.

I remember when I was a kid, my dad recalled the preachers he met when he was a kid in Los Angeles back in the 1920’s. They proclaimed to him that Jesus would be returning soon to battle Satan. ‘Jesus was only months or a few years away’ from his return back then. That is what folks believed at the time of Jesus death as well.

Now so many years later, I have met those same folks, and according to them, Jesus is almost here, finally. The last days are now in place, praise God. I hope Jesus tosses all the religious leadership of the world in that crack he opened up below Mt Sinai, and then I hope he throws a big party for the rest of us. Religious leaders had 2000 years of pleasure in their sin. Perhaps their sinful season is over and they will all be put in a wooden ship on a lake of fire.