The Wattree Chronicle: Religious Hatred and Bigotry: Would A Loving God Do This To Us?

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Religious Hatred and Bigotry: Would A Loving God Do This To Us?

In God We Trust. REALLY!!!?

Many people who profess to be “of faith” are involved in religion for the wrong reasons. They're not about love; they're about hating everybody who don't think exactly like they do. They use religion to justify their bigotry, as a "God-approved" reason to hate everybody who's not on "their team," or who is different from themselves.
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In fact, religion FUELS every other form of bigotry there is. If you look at ANY form of bigotry, you’ll find religion at its root. As we saw in Paris, France, ORGANIZED religion is the most prolific instigator of hatred in the world. Just think about the irony of a military Chaplain - “Dear Lord, please help us to kill more of them than they do of us. Amen.”
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Would God bestow such a malevolent force of hatred upon man. I don't think so. When God created human beings, we weren't created to require either a "User's Guide," soothsayers, or other "anointed" men to tell us how to conduct our lives. We were given individual intellect and a conscience to help us navigate our way through life. As I've pointed out many times before, when my neighbor is at work and his beautiful young wife comes out in the yard and flashes her beautiful smile in my direction, I don't need a book or a preacher to tell me what's appropriate conduct and what's not. The minute my mind goes astray I can hear God's voice - "Now, Eric, you know what you're thinking is not right, so just wave, go in the house, and take a cold shower." And in response, I do just that - problem solved.
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And if you look at nature, even a dog will look over his shoulder before he steals a chicken wing off a table. So even he has a sense of right and wrong. In addition, Whales and other aquatic animals have an innate sense of when to migrate to other waters and where to go to spawn. And migratory birds don't need a calendar and compass to know when to fly South, and in which direction it lies. It was built into their DNA. The same is true of man.

Man was created with an innate sense of spirituality, and a knowledge of how he should live his life. The problem is, man is in transition. We were created to grow into much more enlightened beings, but at this point in our development the animalistic emotions triggered by our still very active brain stem are in direct conflict with our higher cognitive sense of self and the world around us. As a result, instead of using our growing cognition to seek enlightenment, many of us direct our intellectual energy toward satisfying our more basic, and animalistic needs, or the seven deadly sins - Wrath, Greed, Sloth, Pride, Lust, Envy, and Gluttony.
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That's where organized religion comes in. It reflects man's attempt to control the minds of other men in order to more efficiently pursue his baser needs. They promote wrath among their fellow men through the use of creed in order to promote their greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. And while I don't intend to become blatantly political here, I'd be remiss by not pointing out that every one of those "deadly sins" are uniquely characterized by the Religious Right and the GOP - especially wrath, greed, and gluttony.
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But of course, not all people of faith are bad. I know wonderful people of many faiths, but they're generally the ones who are more spiritual than dogmatic. But many of these Bible-thumpin’, Amen-Corner kind of people better HOPE that Hell’s a myth, however, because if it’s real, God’s going to be dumpin’ them in there by the church-loads.
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If God intended to hand down religion to guide us, wouldn't he have sense enough to just create ONE religion so his word would be clear and we wouldn't have anything to fight over? Religious organizations were organized by man for the expressed purpose of saying, "We’re Godly, and we’re God’s chosen people. Everyone who's different from us and who don’t adhere to our creed are heathens. They're not of God. They're evil, so we have God's permission to destroy them." It's that attitude that is the source of the world’s hatred and animosity.
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A loving God wouldn't put anything that caused that kind of hatred and division on Earth. It would contradict his purpose, and God's not stupid. He'd know that creating more than one religion would be in direct opposition to the Biblical prescription to "Love thy neighbor." Just imagine what the world would be like if there was no such thing as Christians, Muslims, or Jews, and if all the people of faith in the world were simply spiritual and embraced the wonder of creation. The world would be a much better place, because it would simply be broken down into good people as oppose to bad people, and there would be no creeds for the demagogues to use to divide us. Now, THAT, would be the work of God.
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So if Americans truly believed in the Bible, they would demonstrate that fact by reading and adhering to ALL of the Bible, and not just those parts that they find convenient. But it's clear that just about every church in America has missed the part below. If they followed the scripture below, there'd be no screaming and begging preachers, and there'd be no Bible-thumping hypocrites - in fact, there wouldn't be a such thing as ORGANIZED religion, because everybody would simply be spiritual. But don't take my word for it. After all, as many preachers would no doubt say, I could be "working for the Devil." But here's what the Bible says, in clear, and unequivocal prose:

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“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. When you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward . . ."
Matthew 6:1-34
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Is that clear enough? So who are you going to believe, your silver-tongued, big car driving pastor, or the Bible?
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God, Creation, And Man

So does God even exist? Yes, and I can prove it. God is whatever force is responsible for what we define as reality. So if reality exists, God must exists. That definition changes the discussion of whether or not God exists, to one of defining the nature of his existence (I'm simply using "his" as a convenient chauvinistic pronoun to avoid having to struggle with the question of whether God is a male, female, or simply an it). But I don’t believe that God is directly interacting with man, or anything else in the universe that he created. For me, God, Nature, and the Universe are one and the same, so everything in the universe, including man, is a part of God, and we can only know his will by his nature, and what he has done.
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What Does This Have To Do With God?

Thus, what "people of faith" call "faith," is not a faith in God at all, it's a faith in what another man has TOLD them about God, so it's actually a faith in man. What most people have "faith" in is merely a parochial accident of birth. The very same person who has "faith" in Christianity in Georgia, would have "faith" in Islam if he'd been born in Iran, or "faith" in Judaism if he'd been born in Israel. In short, we have "faith" in what we were taught, not God. God is simply what we use to JUSTIFY our "faith."
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God made birds to fly, fish to swim, and man to THINK, not to have "faith" in the contrived delusions of other self-serving and/or superstitious men. Every other species on Earth has sense enough to adhere to their nature but man, and if you'll notice, man is also one of the few species who can't live in harmony within his environment. In fact, our idiocy threatens to destroy ALL life on this planet.
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Man is on a huge ego trip. There are over 200 billion stars in just this speck of a galaxy, and even though it is a speck in terms of the universe, you'd have to travel 186,000 miles every second for four and a half YEARS just to get to the next closest star in our galaxy - and again, there are over 200 billion of them, and there are hundreds of billions of other galaxies just like ours in the universe. So believe me - God is not as fixated on man as man would like to believe. In cosmic terms of significance, man is not even one thousandth as significant as one grain of sand on all of the beaches on Earth and beneath the sea.
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Thus, it is only man’s arrogance and tremendous ego that makes him think that God is more concerned about him than he is anything else he created in the universe? Consider this - did he send his "Only begotten flea" to save all the fleas in the world? If not, why not? What makes man think he’s more important than anything else that God created?
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Another thing that betrays man's gross arrogance is our belief that we’re so important that God is going to jump through hoops to gain our favor. God’s not stupid. He's no more going to do magic tricks and jump through hoops to get man to worship him than any man would tap dance and do headstands to get the germs under his toilet seat to worship him. Yet, countless men, women, and children are dying every year in the ridiculous conviction by many that they’re acting on God’s behalf.
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When I was a young kid, I would be walking into trees because I had my eyes closed praying that God wouldn't condemn me to Hell for the common sense - that he gave me - that kept popping up in my head. As much as I wanted to be "a child of God," I just couldn't get myself to believe in talkin' snakes - and I wasn't a big enough hypocrite to try to lie to him about it. So I had a problem. My religious training had me CONVINCED that I was doomed to go to Hell because I couldn't bring myself to believe in that nonsense. But at about the age of ten I said a simple prayer that freed me of that burden: "Lord, Please give me the wisdom to know the truth, and give me the strength and determination to carry it through." It was a childish prayer, and not very eloquent, but it did the trick. That was one prayer that God definitely answered, because when I opened my eyes, I was free of preachers. It freed me to think for myself, and while you'll never see me in church, I still say that prayer every night . . . if I haven't drank too much gin. So yeah, I'm flawed, but I'm sure God knows my heart is in the right place, and that's what counts.
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And finally, before you write me off as an agent of the Devil, you should ask yourself the following - when was the last time that Satan sent a message to mankind to stop killing each other? And if God indeed "works in mysterious ways," how do you know it wasn't God's will for you to read this message? And the basic message is short and sweet - we need to wake up, rein in our egos, and come to terms with our gross stupidity regarding God.

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Know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.
John 8:32
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