The following piece of misinformation expresses sentiments common to religious dogma, that anything said differently from the dictums of doctrine poses an evil threat that must be lied about. The lie, of course, is so old it has taken on the aura of unquestionable truth, and so those who express it believe it in the most honest fashion of which they are capable. That does not, however, make it any less of a lie.

<http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/view/letters/2570287.shtml>

As written by Bill Cripe and published by the Morning Sentinel Newspaper (crap-colored here, interspersed with my comments in creamy white):

Wednesday, March 29, 2006  Without God's influence, there is only hell on earth

Copyright © 2006 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

I was intrigued by Terry Libby's letter (March 18) about why people commit violence.

What would be far more intriguing would be a hyperlink to those comments so we all could be intrigued by them. I realize that is an oversight by the paper, not by the writer.

"Violence was one of our ancestors' major tools of survival... We inherited our violent capacities from the animal world...directly from our ancestors." "Religion is partly an expression of human nature. A sort of magnifying glass that causes, intensifies or aggravates the brain's neurotic tendencies... The world is full of violence because its religious manias are based on the mentalities of ancient barbarians."

It sounds to me like someone has been reading the atheist philosophers of the past. It was Karl Marx who said, "religion is the opium of the people."

That Mister Marx may have said that does not make it erroneous. You must show why you disbelieve it, since the statement appears to be very true. Attempts to discredit another writer by imposing a fallacy onto him (guilt by association, when no association has been shown) is a common Christian ploy to throw readers/listeners off the track. What Mister Libby wrote still stands unchallenged by you, in spite of the ploy.

So what is the answer to world violence? Libby says, "Heck, that's easy -- Me. De-brainwash (people) from the lies and delusions of the myth-pushers, and I promise, more world 'peace' will follow."

Really? We have centuries of history that demonstrate the opposite. While Christianity has its punctuations of violence, those dots are mere pinpricks against the complete backdrop of the Christian faith. Christianity mitigates and decries the worst of man's nature whereas atheism provokes it and energizes it.

Actually, we have millenniums of history showing religion to be at the heart of all evil, and not just in dotty spats. The backdrop of all Arabic (not just the Christian arm of) religious faith is war, pillaging, attempted genocides, mass murder, pogroms, and the whole nasty chimera documented in history, and in the scriptures. Religion and religious differences offer the opportunity and, often, the sole reason.

Atheism has at its core, a license and a history of violence.

Much of that history records Christian attempts to blame the actions of other Christians on atheism and atheists, or onto other arms of the Arabic religions. Some of that, too, is recorded in your scriptures. Here is a hint: Apostasy does NOT remove from a person's psyche the compulsions religion induced there. Hitler wrote as a Christian, and expressed typical Christian aims in what he wrote (look in Mein Kampf). His aims included genocide of followers of another arm of the Arabic religions, Judaism. Stalin was raised a Christian, and the results of that are well known to us. America is engaged in a war right now that involves all three branches of the Arabic creeds, and thousands are dying as a result. This war is so old nobody remembers who started it, but it has something to do with crusades and crosses. (The cross originally represented the war sword in the Persian religion of Mithraism in which Christianity took root).

In the absence of a supreme being, there is no one and no reason to mitigate wicked behavior.

Since no supreme being has been shown to exist, even after all the thousands of years religions have had the opportunity and onus to produce one, perhaps this explains why religions behave in such unmitigated ways. It appears that, in religion, one can say what one wants and it stands or falls more on its appeal to the emotions than on anything factual at all. It also appears that, failing that in one group, all that is then required is to go out and start a new group from those to whom it did appeal. No proof to the contrary seems necessary, due to the absence (if what you wrote is true) of a supreme being. Result: 15000 cults and sects, and still counting.

In reality, the history of atheistic despotism illustrates the absurdity of world peace as the expected outcome. You think there's violence in the world now; remove all influence of God and what you're left with is hell on earth.

Bill Cripe — Waterville — pb@fefchurch.org

Philippians 1:18 "But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice. Yes, and I will continue to rejoice" NIV Bible
KING JAMES BIBLE: "What then? notwithstanding every way, whether in pretence or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and I will rejoice."

Since the "atheistic despotism" you refer to belongs mainly to Christianity, the truth remains untested. Most of what enables survival now originated in the atheist method of thought; most of the application of that to the needs of war and conquest have, in fact, come out of the Christian drive to conquer the world, now equaled by the Islamic drive to do the same, thanks to spurring of grassroots reaction to perpetual crusades over the millenniums. I would even venture to say that connections can be accurately shown to most of the defacement, disease and despoilment of Earth by practices and diseases spread by Christianity into the world.

The atheism you so decry becomes active only in defense of our right to demand you to provide credible evidence of any truth in your words before we will believe them. Only foolish people, or weak-willed people, or careless people, would base their entire existence on only someone else's word for something that seems so important and appears to have manipulation and conquest by emotional appeal as its aim, and as its sole method of conviction, and to be based in no factual materials at all.

With no god at the helm, Christianity nor any of the other Arabic religions, nor any religions, has no chance of answering to a "supreme being" that, in the end, and to all attempts to find or define it, appears to be nonexistent. Let me tell you one thing that is true: If a god exists, it will be an atheist who discovers that. It will never be a religious person.

And that, I believe, more than anything else, stands behind all the religious attempts to disparage us as evil people: You do not want or dare to chance whether that could happen, because in the deepest parts of your psyche you know it is true, and your chances of having chosen the right god to worship are too slim to measure.

Check out this link for a critical assessment of the Ten Commandments our nation is supposedly founded on: http://adamkemp.newsvine.com/_news/2006/06/26/268140-america-was-not-founded-on-the-ten-commandments

"To deny a right to the experience of pleasure is immoral unless that denial can be justified by a valid presentation of how pain will result from that experience in an amount that would render the expected pleasure regrettable; or, if it can be shown that pain will be induced in others innocent of any involvement. The role of science in moral issues should be to test that, predict that, and find harmless ways to demonstrate that."

— L. H. Whitling in the eBook, Secular Morality —