reply to anon comment

lest everyone miss it who might be interested, I'm going to start a new post with my reply to the comments left by "anonymous" to my post regarding the first part of the Zeitgeist movie.

First, it doesn't really matter (to me) whether there are consistencies between different religions. It doesn't matter (to me) if religious symbolism means this or that. But I do thank you for taking the time to point out some of the falsehoods presented in that movie. We should all question everything and find the truth for ourselves, especially when it is something important to us. I can see that religion is something very important to you, and I respect that. What does matter to me, as evidenced by the things I write about here in my blog, is how religion has been used by the authorities to keep people in line, to control people, to prevent autonomy. Religion does this (I'm not picking on any one religion here, but I have to use Christianity as an example simply because I am more familiar with it than any other religion) by creating an objective Absolute Truth, complete with laws and rules the people are to obey, or else. The thing that bothers me most, and always has, is that they force you to obey through fear, the ultimate threat is eternal damnation.

Evil does not lie in the hearts of men. Evil was invented by those who wish the power to control us, to give us something to blame when things go wrong (see my posts on Plato). It's all part of the same game: control, obedience, blame, all working together to prevent people from accepting responsibility for their own actions. People are not bad inside, they are not evil. People are only able to harm other people when the authority that tells them right from wrong lies externally rather than inside their own hearts and minds. Religion may have originally intended to set us free, but it has been a very effective tool to keep us enslaved instead. As far as Christianity goes, the Romans saw what a powerful tool it could be, and so totally twisted the message of Christ and turned what had the potential to liberate and empower the people into the strongest shackles with which to keep the people in line history has ever seen.

The true religion lies in your heart, not in the words of man, no matter how Holy those words are considered to be. "all prophets are false prophets, for they speak from their hearts, and not the Word of God" [sic] See, the only way we can know God is through our hearts. Our relationship with the Divine is totally subjective. When we try to talk about it using objective language, it just doesn't translate adequately, and our words become false (that does not mean that our beliefs are false, just how we talk about them is).