The Recent Mass Suicide in Kenya and the Moral Turpitude of Religion
An Avalanche of Data, and Airtight Logical Arguments, Prove that Religion is the biggest Cause of Murder on Earth
By
David Gottfried
Today’s New York Times reported that a taxi driver, in Kenya, decided he was a messenger from God, and he convinced his followers to starve to death as that would enable them to “see Jesus” and obtain eternal salvation. So far, over 170 dead bodies have been recovered.
The world is in the throes of a sort of global counter reformation. Just as the Catholic Church, in the baroque period, sought to reassert its primacy and authority against the Protestant Reformation in a movement often termed the “counter reformation,” today all religions, no matter how diametrically opposed their theistic ideologies or fantasies, have come together to defend blind, obedient, all-consuming fratricidal faith. Yes, the Imams and Ayatollahs, the Jerry Fallwells and their Marjorie Taylor Greenes in Washington, and the Lubavitcher Rabbis in Brooklyn who want Judaism to regress to what it was in bigoted, parochial 18th century Poland – when Jews were trod into the ground like peat -- are busily praying not to G-d but to rampant, romantic Nostalgia for a golden age of belief that only existed in Christmas Carols and Hallmark Holiday cards.
Among other things, we are told that a religious renaissance (the term religious renaissance seems highly oxymoronic) will lead to an upswing in moral conduct. In this progressively illiterate nation, in which ideas are developed not through logical argument but by molesting people with a succession of videos and images, people have been programmed, like Pavlov’s dogs, to associate religion with good moral behavior.
The notion, that religion promotes goodness, is mouthed by religious advocates the world over.
Therefore, I come to you today to tell you precisely how religion is conducive to immorality.
I am sure many of my readers are familiar with some of the easy-to-grasp and frequently discussed ways in which religion fosters immorality. I will summarize the familiar ways in which religion furthers immorality. Then, I will embark on the main contribution of this essay: Explaining how religion furthers immorality even when it stands as a ballast and buttress for the family.
The familiar ways in which religion advances the immoral include:
A) It is conducive to a chilling, unforgiving and vindictive attitude toward “sinners.”
B) Religion fosters group loyalty over ethical behavior (We Muslims are number one and we spit on all outsiders; We Jews are number one and we spit on all outsiders; We Christians are number one and we spit on all outsiders.) The fierce group loyalty inspired by religion makes religion the biggest cause of murder in the world. Consider:
i) Millions killed in the Indian subcontinent, since World War two alone, in fighting between Hindus and Muslims;
ii) Millions killed in fighting between Sunni and Shiite Muslims;
iii) How many killed in fighting between Protestants and Catholics over the proper way to worship Jesus, “the prince of peace.” (And you want to know why this Jew finds it difficult to respect Christians);
iv) Christians slaughtered in Egypt, a few years ago, because Muslims were convinced that they had spread the swine flu virus because they ate pork (The term “swine flu virus” was a misnomer as that virus has nothing to do with pork);
v) Christians slaughtered by Muslims in Lebanon;
vi) Christians and Muslims slaughtering one another for centuries;
vii) Jews and Muslims slaughtered by Christians in the crusades;
viii) Jews slaughtered in Spain when the Bishop of Barcelona decreed that one-third of the Jews must leave Spain, one-third of the Jews must convert to the Roman church and one-third of the Jews must be put to death;
ix) Jews killed by Christians because Christians got it into their highly feeble Christian brains that Jews caused the black plague by poisoning the wells of Europe, used the blood of Christian children to make matzoh and were, at one and the same time, bankers and communists who wanted to wage a revolution against bankers and the capitalistic class.
x) The Jews killed in the Holocaust
C) Religion is used to buttress the oppression inflicted by the mighty (The Divine Right of Kings: The King is King because G-d wants him to be King and rebellion against the King constitutes partiality toward Satan; Jesus in the New Testament: Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s);
D) Religion teaches people to discount and devalue the wonderful possibilities of life in this world as it persistently teaches that Heaven is where it’s at and that this world is a morass of vile temptations. (The veneration of death and self-nullification was so intense that in the Middle Ages priests and nuns slept in the very boxes which were to be their coffins).
However, some aspects of religion’s claim to moral superiority are rarely challenged.
More specifically, when religion claims to be furthering morality by furthering marriage, reproduction and the family, it is hardly ever challenged. Most people accept the notion that a land chock full of families with children is a blessed, sainted and even happy nation.
I submit to you that family life can actually be harmful to moral behavior.
When people have children, they devote every last minute of life toward their children. Consequently, they have no time to fight slavery, the Holocaust, let alone matters such as global warming.
When one is married with children, one becomes a tiny, meager sort of man. One becomes a micey sort of man as one cares about the most trivial pieces of cheese one can capture (An award for your son for little league) but one’s gnawing for junk for one’s kiddies sometimes matures into a rabid rat’s bite as one sabotage’s a neighbor’s kid’s chance to get into a good school so your little brat will be admitted.
Of course we want humanity to continue on this planet so I am all for reproduction and I am all for parenting as I beg to differ with the lords and ladies of silicon valley who, I have no doubt, will soon tell us that children should be raised by robots free of racist, sexist or homophobic inclinations and shot through with the sort of 2001-Space-Odyssey sterility and lack of spontaneity that will make us all go running for bottles of sleeping pills.
However, for society to truly thrive a large minority of people must not have children because people who have children rarely seem to get anything done. They are too busy taking care of their spoiled brats to do anything of substance.
I am sure you can refer me to Winston Churchill and thousands of historical personages who had plenty of children and also molded history into something in their own image, but years ago, parents were free of their children. Indeed, Duff Cooper, in his biography of Tallyrand, said that in the days of the ancien regime parents were not obligated to do jack shit for their kids. By Churchill’s time, parents had to do more for their kids, but I am quite certain that if boozing and gallivanting Winston Churchill never attended a single parent teacher’s conference in the whole of his children’s lives, no one would have looked askance. However, nowadays parents are expected to help their kids with their homework, play catch with them, tell them bedtime stories and comfort them when they are afraid of the bogeyman. Because we live in a hypercapitalistic society in which men and women alike have been transformed into bitches on wheels constantly boasting, comparing, and screaming about their glorious achievements, parents never enjoy repose from the all-consuming jihad of child rearing: Making sure that your kid is the smartest little obnoxious brat in the Western world.
How Marriage Impedes Moral Conduct
The immediately preceding is a sample of the favorite recordings of the well-bred matrons at General Harkins’ smashing Saigon parties.
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Family life tends to impede moral conduct because of the particular needs of complaining, egotistical wives. (I am not saying that all women are bitches. I am saying that heterosexual women, who measure their glory by the length of the train on their evening gowns, are bitches)
David Halberstam, in “The Best and the Brightest,” the finest written history of the Vietnam War, explained how heterosexual female bitchery was one of the factors which led to our debacle in Vietnam. (Of course, he did not use the sort of language employed by me)
General Harkins, who commanded MACV (The military assistance command --- Vietnam) and the American embassy in Saigon gave the very best parties in South Vietnam. A proper bitchy matron, from the States, knew that she just had to go to the very finest parties as she just had to walk around the ballroom bedecked in Jewels and silk and satin gowns. She also knew that to get invited to these lavish parties, one’s hubby had to play by the rules and always report that the war was going well and that the South Vietnamese supported their government of American stooges. Halberstam reports that because married journalists always tended to whitewash the truth so their wives could get invited to the swankiest Saigon parties, the journalists who did the best work were largely single.