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Letter: Religion through a grown-up’s eyes

Israel is doing a great job of turning the rest of the world against it for occupying foreign territory, human-rights violations and military interventions that violate international law (just like we do). The Palestinians have been evicted from their homes, they have watched them be demolished along with their wells, and they have no access to water and no civil rights to assemble or vote. And the Gaza Strip has been sealed off and effectively turned into the world’s largest open-air prison.

It’s encouraging to see so many Jewish-American citizens and organizations speaking out against this genocidal policy, where millions of Palestinians live in conditions not unlike South Africa’s apartheid: arrest and imprisonment without charge or trial, searches without warrants and torture. (Sound familiar?) Our corporate media support one side of the story, but if you want the facts about this conflict, from a true “insider,” listen to the talks by Mika Peled (“The General’s Son”) on YouTube. Enlightening and worth your time.

However, maybe we should all be talking about the real root cause of this problem: religion! Stupid religions, written thousands of years ago by Bronze Age cretins who believed God told them it was OK to eat locusts but not shellfish, that women should neither be seen nor heard but definitely stoned to death if they fooled around, and that God preferred one tribe of primitive halfwits over another. “Hey, guess what, everybody: We’re the chosen people! Yeah, God told me so last night. Yes, he did!”



Perhaps we should reconsider the wisdom of our founding fathers, intelligent and well-read men who understood that the Bible stories were lifted from other religions that were around 1,000 years before Christianity. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, “I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find, in our superstition of Christianity, one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded on fables and mythology.”

Yeah, these guys were pretty much on the same page, and it wasn’t from a holy book. Benjamin Franklin: “The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.” John Adams: “The doctrine of the divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity.” Thomas Paine: “Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.”




The founders were actual grown-ups. They knew that religions were scams, and they wanted nothing to do with them. Again, from Jefferson, never one to mince words: “If one wishes to know more about the caliber of people who serve this Christian god, they are always of two classes: hypocrites and fools.” Maybe it’s time for us to grow up and do the same.

Steve Saylor

Carbondale