Man's relentless search for the full understanding of his infinitely mysterious universe has invariably caused him to become an exceedingly vulnerable target for all sorts of unfounded superstitions and seductive distortions of our more than complex reality. It has only been in the last few hundred years of his existence in this miraculous Garden of Eden that his quantum leap in the comprehension of his universe with the intellectual use of science that his need to know can now be met with fact, physical and observable phenomenon and most importantly, reality. The vastly outdated and no longer needed role of religions offering mostly mythological explanations for the existence of our physical surroundings is being stubbornly and far too slowly abandoned. Western religions so entangled the myths of creation with the existence of an omniscient god that the sheer admittance of the validity of science would necessarily bring into serious question the realistic existence of a Divine god. In 1633, Galileo Galilei was finally deemed a horrific heretic in the eyes of the Catholic Church following some nineteen years of controversy, and it wasn't until 1992 that he was fully vindicated of any heresy or wrongdoing. In the early seventeenth century a Cardinal Baronius authoritatively wrote that the "Holy Spirit intended to teach us in the Bible how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go." What a gross and irresponsible denial of reality! Galileo's lifelong support and definitive confirmation of Copernicus' revolutionary discoveries about our universe was just the beginning of the ultimate unraveling of the Church's ideological teachings founded solely on myths and gross illusions.
     The Church has been so forced by its own dogmatic stubbornness to maintain its unfounded deceptions in the face of scientific realities for the realistic fear of loosing all of its remaining credibility. The Church had so thoroughly enslaved the minds of its congregations with the doctrine of absolute obedience, that even today, many Christians still hold to the false notion that their mythological god actually created man and the entire universe that revolves around him. Nothing could be further from the truth, and when a continuingly duped populace bases their total existence on such erroneous premises, there is little hope that the rest of the social order can possibly expect anything but utter chaos. When the Church continues to vehemently deny the truth, how can they justly point a finger at our declining social morals and standards and even pretend to keep a straight face. Hypocrites, every one of them! The rotten apple in the barrel of moral fibers is indeed the Church and its naïvely indoctrinated clergy; not those usually accused, that the pious and morally corrupted clergymen too handedly point at.
     I know that Jesus of Nazareth would be ghastly appalled at the mass corruption of his teachings in the hands of that un-Holy Father in Rome. I liken the ideological relationship between the Pope and Jesus of Nazareth to that illogical relationship between Lenin and Marx. They, the Pope and Lenin, were and are often mass enslavers and historically even murderers of innocent people. The Church has long contended that original sin was the inherited reality of every born man (and woman) and it has managed to successfully maintain this ever so deceitful centerpiece of ideological spiritual enslavement as a prime example of absolute truth. If the believer accepts this notion of imperfection he finds himself at the mercy of the Church, which claims that it alone has the redemptive power to free the potential believer from this inherent anathema. Neither the Church nor I have that redemptive power to free you, not that you need to be freed from anything but your misguided belief that original sin actually exist. A simple and loving man that said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free" suggested the only justifiable answer some two thousand years ago.  Nowhere in Jesus' teachings was the notion of obedience or the idea of any form of spiritual enslavement; to the contrary, it was only "freedom."
     Jesus had also suggested that we should even love our enemies not kill them or even enslave them. The church has become such a covert instigator of hate that they now fly soundly in the face of the supreme commandment of loving our neighbors as ourselves. The church even inspired such hate groups as the Ku Klux Klan whom still proudly employs a burning cross as their sacred sign of intimidation. At least the church has finally ceased the burning of heretics themselves. They just inspire others to carry out their hateful attacks on those who vehemently deny their self-proclaimed absolute and irreverent authority. Therein resided the widespread source of domestic violence against women, the continued hate crimes against African-Americans, the death of a Matthew Shepard and the unwarranted killings at several sites of legal abortion clinics. By their fruits you will come to know them as only purveyors of hate and not some beloved child of a vengeful God that should condone hate and murder. I would like to recognize that not all Christians behave in this deplorable manner, but these few true believers who reject this calamitous behavior need to accept their given responsibility of being their brother's keeper and more aggressively denounce this anachronism.
     The great ancient interpreters of the Law (Pharisees) had always attempted to control and enslave the Hebrew masses with such arrogant and false command of the Law. Jesus specifically warned against them as reported in Matthew 16:12. Paul, who was a self proclaimed Pharisee (Acts 23:6) continued this patriarchal tradition with any number of gross misrepresentations of what Jesus had actually taught. That is why, in the Fourth Century, the writings of this infamous Pharisee were specifically included in the assembled papers that the Catholic Church then deemed the Holy Scriptures. Jerry Falwell is an excellent example of a modern-day Pharisee, and he is equally corrupted by his own private theology. He and his praetorian interpretations should be equivalently avoided with same fierce condemnation that Jesus had specifically directed against the Pharisees of old. In the same undeviating manner that Jesus had argued with the lawyers that he had not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill the true meaning of law, I would suggests that we all have a more than commensurate need to do the same today; love one another!
     Moral judgments based on Biblical Law is most certainly the accepted eminent domain of the Church, assuming, of course, that the Church actually represents some truly Devine external god. I would seriously contend that Jesus, the man, demonstrated that our gods actually resides within each of us in the same sense that love should be equally present. Jesus' deification to Christ-hood occurred some three-hundred years after his supposed death on the cross. As the man he actually was, he more than once clearly articulated the he and the Father were as one. He also said that if you had known him, you had known the Father as well. These were both clear declarations that each man and woman had the same potential of godliness well within themselves and only needed to demonstrate love for their friends and neighbors to achieve the resultant joy and salvation in their own lives—not in death! The very idea that our rewards come after life was another of those Church's contrived innovations designed specifically to justify the mass annihilation of early Christians by the Roman Empire. The Pope (actually the heads of several Hebrew sects) and Constantine didn't want to share the inherited quilt of having unjustly murdered so many innocent citizens without postulating that they had not died in vein or without some posthumous reward for their unwilling sacrifice. Oh, the tangled webs we weave when first we begin to deceive. It appears to be the almost innate nature of the animal to never publicly confess a gross error or mistake. Instead, if we are held responsible, we most simply tend to either deny our wrongful actions outright or pitifully attempt to create some poorly contrived justification. "My genes made me do it!" Of course, if the perpetrator is in some position of absolute authority, there's no justification needed except that very authority. It is precisely that need of absolute authority that gave rise to the Catholic Church investing the heads of state with that infamous Divine Right of Kings. Even though we Americans have nominally abandoned this European practice, we still make reference to our President as having that same relentless moral authority, and sadly, the American government still enacts civil laws that are based on antiquated and wrongly postulated religious notions of "right and wrong."
     I hope you will concede that civil judgment is the eminent domain of the state. Jesus had clearly distinguished a profound difference between the civil and moral/spiritual authorities when he stated that one should "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's." That is to say that we should all have the individual freedom of choice under a self-directed moral judgment based on that first commandment of love, and the people's consent to civil order should only be that of the absolute protection of every individual's right to that freedom of choice, so long as the exercise of which does not infringe on anyone else's freedom. We should only come under the authority of civil law when we violate the absolute sanctity of another individual's right to live his own life in any manner that they deem suitable for themselves. "Judge not, less you be judged." Our freedom of religion is precisely our individualized freedom to determine for ourselves the source of the spiritual/moral authority that governs our own private lives. No one had the authority to make that decision for any of us. Our civil laws should in no manner restrict that freedom of choice nor attempt to govern or influence the manner, which we morally conduct ourselves so long as our conduct does not interfere with the free choice and expression of others. Prejudice and bigotry is the deliberate and sometimes-political inclusions of exceptions to this pronouncement of the free exercise of choice of every individual human being. There can be no legitimate exception as long as an individual lives within the justifiable civil laws of his particular community and those civil laws do not attempt to govern either the spiritual and/or moral choices made by any given individual. We all have the innate right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in our own private and unique manner.
     Love thyself (that potentially godly core that lies within each of us) with all your heart, soul and mind, then love all of thy neighbors with an equal share of that universally recognized passion. This is a most sound formula for a totally fulfilling life that is aptly fitting for every living human anywhere on this planet and a concept that could be easily adopted by anyone and easily incorporated into any faith anywhere in our entire universe. That was and remains precisely the universality of Jesus' teachings; not the misconception that there need exists only one heavenly god for all of mankind. That God of old mythologies simply doesn't and never did really exist! The great discoveries of the last half of this millennium have completely and unquestionably dismantled and destroyed the age-old man-conceived myths of our Judeo-Christian heritage. We could actual fulfill the prophesy of a millennium of peace, only if we would successfully retire and put away the false beliefs of Christendom, including the idea that the man, Jesus, will miraculously return from the grave and rule for a thousand years. We need only to simply adopt the actual teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and we could have that promised peace for all and a true heaven on earth. We just might be able to restore to reality and actually inhabit that mythological Garden of Eden.
     Don't be taken by the sheer numbers of those proclaiming that this Christianity of today is anything but the workings of a deliberately ignorant or maybe just naïve clergy that is fully bent on maintaining its ominous power over the souls of every individual within its circuitous clasps. It has always been a gigantically insurmountable pyramid with the masses of the people hopelessly entrapped at the bottom. Only the truth has been solely imbued with the power to set any of us free. You might note that Jesus never directly inferred that a belief in and acceptance of a heavenly father was the source of our ultimate freedom (salvation). It was instead, through his profound teachings and understanding of the truth that we could come to know the Father that resides within each of us. Sprinkle all of this with a hardy dose of love and we just might achieve salvation from those despots who would so often malevolently, if not in total ignorance of the truth, enslave our souls.
     The very nature of most religions is an attempt to organize and indoctrinate its followers into some controllable order through group rituals and often-elaborate regalia. The placing and often enormous size of religious structures is a calculated means of imbuing a community's religion with centralized and focused authority. Just visit any Mexican (other Spanish/Catholic dominated country) town or even New Mexican town ("Old town") and there you will find the Catholic Church at its center.  Most of the Pueblos in New Mexico are equally entrusted with a church structure at it center place there by the Catholic Church. There are still in existence today those imposed taxes on the members of the church commonly known as tithes that support these horrid institutions of spiritual slavery. The truth is that most of us simply accept this impoverished state of our current reality as an acceptable given because we have not had the free opportunity to explore the infinite alternatives. We are mostly led to believe that our family's religions are somehow validated by the very fact that those loving parents must actually know what is best for us. Of course, I'm most aware that many of our modern youth simply don't buy into these outrageous mythologies. Our youth have had the miraculous advantage of a liberally inspired education that has the potential of broadening their individual scope on reality. Like myself, they have had the golden opportunity of benefiting from the mistakes and discoveries of men and women who have not had the narrow restraints of unfounded mythologies limit their almost endless potentialities.
     Religions as such need not vanish from the human scene. It is important that there are broader institutions in addition to the role of the family that supports a moral/spiritual order in society. I contend that the role of the church need change to one that actually teaches understanding and love of one another as well as teaching every individual the profound worthiness and potential that lies only within the confines of that individual. In the simplest of terms, I contend that every child should be empowered to achieve his or her greatest potential and that that potential not be measured by any external or artificially imposed mete except the observance of true joy and happiness. These are necessarily measures of the heart and the achievement of this personal joy is the only measure of true salvation. To this noble aim our churches need to teach only that unconditional love of others and that all begins with each of us learning to truly love who and what we are all about.