Deadly World Religious Systems Still Infecting Billions

By James Donahue

 Everybody knows the Bible story about the origin of the human race. The Hebrew god Jehovah, or the many gods of Elohim, created a man named Adam and a woman named Eve and placed them in a garden called Eden. This is an ancient story shared by the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions. It appears in Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament.

Unless you are a fundamentalist and believe that all of the words in every book of the Bible are God-inspired and therefore must be accepted as factual and historical truth, the story must be perceived as mythology designed to try to explain where we came from and how we got here. The dark side to the Genesis story is that it establishes “original sin” and marks all humans as doomed to damnation unless they turn to God for personal salvation.

And in that part of the creation story lays the root of much of the chaos that has confounded humanity for thousands of years.

There are extreme differences between these three faiths as to how salvation must be accomplished. Worse than that, there are extreme theological disagreements among fractions of all three religious groups as to how believers must conduct their lives to achieve perfection in the eyes of an ever-watchful God.

Wars have been fought, and many a person was excommunicated, tortured, jailed, hung, or even burned at the stake because they dared to question declarations, proclamations and social behavioral laws that emerged from the lips of powerful religious leaders who claimed them to be messages from God.

Such declarations were designed to force humans to blindly accept such incorrect teachings as: the Earth was the center of the universe, the Earth was flat, anyone who refused to accept the teachings of the Koran is an “infidel,” and all who refused to accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior are doomed to eternal damnation.

The conflicts over these kinds of issues were behind the Crusades, a bloody conflict between Christian and Moslem believers that appears to have reared its ugly head again in contemporary Middle Eastern wars, terrorist attacks and bombings.

The conflicts are blamed for the Dark Ages, when the Roman Catholic Church controlled the politics throughout Europe with an iron fist. And they can be traced to the extreme overpopulation problems generated by Catholic dominated third-world countries.

Sadly, these are archaic ideas that no longer belong in a contemporary world where nations are coming to terms with enormous economic, energy, pollution and overpopulation issues that threaten our very extinction.

These are times when humans are waking up to new and correct spiritual pathways that are leading them away from ancient religious systems in droves.

And it is a time when many world leaders are coming to terms over the fact that warfare also is an archaic way of settling old scores, differences in belief systems, and conflicts over water, oil and other natural resources.

While it is true that the Koran, the Bible and other religious works of the ancient past teach the concept of love for one another, they also include stories of a god that condones war, suffering and revenge. These are evil percepts that do not belong in the realm of holiness, yet there they are, clearly defined in these holy books. No wonder followers of these faiths have been so confused for so long.

A study of the teachings of Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha and Krishna shows that none of them advocated war or brutal behavior. All taught love.

The newest spiritual movement among the youth appears to be steering completely away from the religious cults that grew up around these old teachers and distorted their message. This is good news, although we fear the movement may not occur fast enough to stop the insanity.

The nations of the world must lay down their arms, dismantle all of their nuclear weapons, work together to solve problems of climate change, water pollution, over-fishing of the seas, ravaging of the rain forests, and finding new sources of energy. There is no room in this picture for terrorism and warfare.

The Creator as we perceive it is a most magnificent energy/communication system that appears to encompass the entire universe. It is an indifferent force that may not care about our behavior or how many times a day we bow in reverence to some invisible perception of a god in a church, synagogue or mosque.

Indeed, the spirit within us may be a small candle flame in comparison to the great light of the creator of all, but it amounts to the “god within.” And with that light we all have the power to create the universe in which we live. Collectively, we influence one another’s created existence, which could be a wonderful thing if we could just get it right.

Tagging along behind the high priests and the Pope and the other teachers of tread-worn world religions will only lead us deeper into a dark pit of despair, and send us all back into yet another cycle of trying to get it right the next time around. All of the pain and suffering was never necessary.

Eden, that perfect place envisioned in Genesis, has always been within our grasp. All we needed to do was to stop listening to the false teachers and follow our hearts.