The most dastardly result of having some religion dictate to society the political, social and psychological appropriateness of any and all thought and behavior is its propensity for an overwhelming degree of discrimination whether intentional or not.  Mankind by his very genetic makeup is an endlessly diverse animal that will aptly display a multitude of psychological, physical, emotional and spiritual behaviors most all of which can be deemed as natural and acceptable so long as the individual expression of any of these individual behaviors do not in any fashion interfere with the free expression of anyone else’s individual choice of behaviors or thought.  The true Divine Comedy is the tragic realization that in today's society the oppressors have more likely become our own religious neighbors who have so abdicated their own free expression of reality and have become so immersed into believing that their singular narrowly-defined moral position that is dictated by that infamous “word” of their God is the only suitable measure by which all mankind should be so judged.  Nothing could be further from the truth and it was even Jesus himself who was accredited with that most profound saying of, “Judged not....” The other blatant disregard for what Jesus had so earnestly proclaimed is the casual manner in which the Christian so successfully avoids having to love his or her neighbor usually based on some unwritten code of discrimination.  It was upon this singular commandment of loving one's neighbor that Jesus suggested, “rests the entirety of the law,” so that you might have “joy in your life.”
          It is important to understand how the erroneous exercise of some moral judgments seriously affects each and every individual in our society, either directly or vicariously through the too often misdirected individual actions and false beliefs of one's otherwise good neighbor.  The libertarian is at a decisive disadvantage and is most apt to have suffered the awfully horrid and sometimes devastating consequences of severe oppression at the hands of his morally indignant neighbors, most simply because he has so freely and generously granted the inalienable right of the free exercise and expression of one's beliefs.  The tragic dilemma is the reality that one's neighbor is most apt to be the ruinous product of years of dogmatized indoctrinations that are more in align with that political and religious discipline that was specifically created for the orderly control and discipline of the Romans’ awesome numbers of slaves.  It still continues to baffle me how such a historical reality can be so terribly disregarded even though it is such an integral part of the story of how Christianity actually began.
          Christians of all the Protestant denominations rely so heavily on the Bible as being the Word of God and yet most of them are not even aware of the actual history of the four major gospels.  None of the four Gospels were written by the individual for whom they are named; they are all written as being “according to” as for example, The Gospel According to Matthew.  Matthew actually knew Jesus as did John, but the other two Gospels that were “according to” Mark and Luke were attributed two men, neither of whom had never even met Jesus.  The other bit of information that escapes most Christians is the historic fact that of the oldest of the Gospels came from manuscripts that were supposedly written at leased some sixty years after the crucifixion.  At the very least, all that one could say in all seriousness is that all four Gospels are essentially hearsay.  The New Testament was not assembled until the year 325 A.D. and there is no remaining evidence that the selected manuscripts that were used to make up the entire New Testament were not in some part altered in order to be consistent with the objectives of the then newly-created Christian religion.  I sometimes jokingly inquire, “Who was the stenographer that made notes of Jesus' words when he had delivered the infamous Sermon on the Mount?”  The fact that all four Gospels very so significantly in details would leave any good scholar wondering which story was the most accurate.  This singular fact or detail that is repeated a significant number of times throughout the entire New Testament, not just in the Gospels, is the repeated utterance, “Remember brethren, the first commandment; to love one another.”  If I were to take anything as gospel, it would most certainly be, as you have probably already noted, this Jesus’ number one and only commandment.  The rest of it is simply good reading material for the making of a believable mythology.
          The first false presumption that becomes the very foundation for nearly all of the other consequential oppressive behaviors and dictates is the proposition that there exists some supreme being or God that cognitively and so miraculously designed and created the entire universe as a concise backdrop for the singular creation of man himself and then of course, Eve.  These egotistical early Christian theologians in concert with their Hebrew brothers further expanded this absurd notion with the ludicrous suggestion that man himself was created in the very image of this supreme deity most assuredly based on the story of creation as reported in the book of Genesis.  This essentially Hebrew account for the creation of this earth and its inhabitants that was later fully adopted by the Greco-Roman Catholic Church is based solely on a mythology that has no supportive evidence from any of the hard sciences, and even the “soft” explanations are grossly flawed with unsubstantiated presumptions.  If there is anything that is truly miraculous, it is the real evolution of mankind into a feeling thinking being that is ultimately capable of understanding the roots in and of his actual biological evolution and the immense universal environment that has made this grand miracle of man at all possible.  Nowhere in the brief history of man's evolution is there any evidence of any Divine intervention and nowhere outside the terribly creative imagination of man himself is there any support for the existence of a Supreme Being or Divine force that governs the natural laws of our universe.  It was the crowning glory of evolution, man himself, that gave birth to the concept of a higher being or God that must have assuredly been responsible for all of creation.  If there is any truth, it is that man himself that created God in the very image of his highest potential nature of mankind.  It is unfortunate that the same miraculous mind that gave birth to God is the same source for so much oppression; a derogatory behavior that is usually found in the company of greed.
          The very notion that there is a God or some Supreme Being that has absolute authority over our lives somehow robs the individual of their free expression of doing what they are inclined to do or the real possibility of becoming the very human being for which they were born.  It is not right but understandable that if one man is to assume dominion over another, it must necessarily and naturally be based on either brut physical strength or from some higher moral authority that is creatively superior.  It would only naturally follow that if some God or supreme being was actually responsible for the physical creation of man, and that same source of creation would logically have the power to dominate the very creation of his cognitive will.  In the absence of a higher moral authority to rule, man would be left with only his brute strength to dominate another.  This reality is what probably accounts for the endless conflicts and bloody wars that dominate man's history.  If there was truly only one God, well, let's put it this way, “it takes two to tango!”  There are any numbers of these commonly held notions of gods where the beliefs or doctrines are contrary to the very true nature of man and are thus potentially oppressive.  Religions and their gods are not only at odds with the natural behaviors of man but more importantly, to his very individual and unique spirit and the free expression of his deepest thoughts and doubts about the religious environment to which he was born.  Any over-narrowly defined or rigidly designed description of what might be called socially acceptable behavior is by its very utterance oppressive in nature in that there is no one notion or one idea about anything that will necessarily fit every single human being and individual situation; it just isn't possible with a few obvious exceptions.
          The very wonderful thing about man himself is his miraculous and unique ability to think and feel, and the difficulty that is inherent with this unique ability is the dilemma that one is likely faced with his own lack of ability to distinguish the reality of what is indeed a real feeling, a real thought, a real idea, as opposed to the reality of some theoretical construct, like that of some Supreme Being, universal force or the existence of “God.”  The experience of exhilaration that may accompany the very thought of a loving God is indeed temptatiously real and should not be confused with the reality that there is no God.  What we have here is the reality that man is often his own worst enemy most assuredly because he is in possession of such an expansive and imaginative mind that is fully capable of creating the very ideas, ideals and spiritual constructs upon which religions are founded and thrive.  It is it as impossible to un-think a thought as is to undo the making of a God.
          I might say to you, “I believe in God,” and my belief in that God whatever that God might be or not be, is in fact, a reality; my belief is a reality, but the fact that my belief is a reality gives no credence to the actual existence or the reality of the existence of any God that I just might “believe” to be real to my way of thinking or rationalization.  Therein lays the real dilemma.  So, the first notion that we wish to completely dispel is the hypothetical construct of some Supreme Being that is not only credited with governing our universe but directing each and every one of us in all matters of our life with the assumption of some supreme moral authority.  You are by my own contentions quite free to believe in any god or religion that you so desire.  There resides in each one of us a higher nature that we might confuse with the perceived existence of some higher being; that inner higher nature might be what many of us refer to as our conscience?  Simply because everyone of us are so entirely unique it should naturally follow that each of our perceived supreme beings are all uniquely different; we all have a different sense of creation and the creator thereof.  We’re all the wonderful product of something that is very unique and different and the very source of our individual creator is the sum of our parents and that endless array of ancestors all contributing to our unique genetic material.  In that manner of our scientific knowledge, we know that we are all uniquely different because of the very complex makeup of that unique genetic material, which possesses infinite possibilities.
          We should be able to understand from all of this individual uniqueness that the odds of any two individual having the same genetic makeup is expressed in terms of one in one million and if anything, even greater odds.  There are countless portions of our more common belief systems that relentlessly deny our gifted individuality.  The next most crucial of the various tenets of our belief systems, outside of our individual belief in a God, are the endless terms and the degree of differences that are commonly employed to establish the distinctions between a man and then a woman.  I will concede that there are differences most certainly in the scientific terms of our mutually exclusive biology.  And it certainly appears that many men can perhaps be physically stronger than the average women, but of course I have encountered some very weak man.  These mostly physical differences are perhaps more the product of evolution simply because man, for whatever their social roles might have required of them, has been in need of greater musculature that may well have been responsible for required for mere survival; survival of the fittest!  And while the men do the hunting, the woman needed to remain behind and take care of the children or there would be no survival of the race.  The fact that one sex might be superior over the other is a biological misnomer because each of us is genetically both half man and half woman; we know that in the most precise terms of the genetic makeup and the contributions from each of our parents.  If there are any significant differences, they are primarily those of our social culture rather than some absolute biological differences other than that of our sexual plumbing. It is as I had discussed earlier on in this book; that most primal dilemma in which man finds that he is primarily dealing with the greater need for mankind's survival.  As we enter this 21st century, they should be no further need for the oppression of women as a matter of anybody's course, and the Catholic Church ought to consider ordaining a woman into the priesthood with the liturgical rights to administer all of the sacraments.  I think it's time for the Catholic Church to seriously consider having a female Pope.  If I was in charge of the spiritual mafia, I would propose that deal to the Catholic Church that they cannot refuse; “get real or get lost!”
          I'm just not sure which came first; the egg which hatched into that top-dog ruling rooster or that rooster that passed on all his aggressive genes by continuing to mount all the fertile hens simply because it felt so damn good having beaten out all the weaker roosters? What I'm leading to is the whole socio-psychological concept of power and the prominent role it has come to play within the human community; the apparent pleasure that comes from one human being exercising some superiority over another, the thrill of winning at the costs of those who lost or the fact that the spoils of victory go to the winner.  There is little doubt that the etiology of this human phenomenon has its roots in the basic need for survival.  This very imperative need for survival certainly preceded any hint that religion would eventually become an equally forceful psychosomatic element to the very political and social nature of man.  The very root definition of the word, religion is one of “control.”    As we have discussed, religion appears to be at the very foundation of so many of our human problems and it is that sacred theme of the moral authority of religion that is the most abused.  Please understand that this element of control or power is enhanced by another survival imperative most easily defined as greed; the wanting of more than one has any rightful need of.  If a little power adds to one's greater likelihood for survival, then it would logically follow that one's survival whether physically, socially or politically would be greatly enhanced with an increase in that very power or control.  This sinister hunger for power appears to plague almost every aspect of society, including every socioeconomic level and if you will share with me the image of some kindergarten scene with its own set of youthful conflicts, then you could say it every age level of man's entire life.  It is again at that instinctive ‘survival of the fittest’ that is no doubt part of that universal genetic memory and sadly carries with it the potential for both good and evil; just another expression of reality!  Because of this potential runs the gamut of man's infinite array of behaviors, we do have a choice.  Gandhi's great offering to the world was his understanding and practice of the concept, passive resistance.  This passive resistance is a means for man to stand firm on his individuality or his own theoretical or spiritual position without imposing on anyone else's position; the fundamental art of becoming oppressors only unto ourselves.  This is the application of universal freedom for everyone becoming exactly who they are and without that need to oppress not even one single individual.  That’s having your cake and eating it both!  It is such an idealic position and yet Gandhi, in his own loving manner, demonstrated its real possibility.
          I don't believe that it is necessary for me to belabor the root or definition of the word, authority.  There is no question that the political design of the Christian Church was to control the potentially unrestrained behavior of the massive numbers of slaves of the Roman Empire, were there to ever have been a mass revolt.  By historical precedents, the highest moral authority in almost any culture was that of some supreme deity or invisible power that not only supposedly controlled life itself but all of the necessary elements for its very existence and continued survival.  In some cases it became necessary that this authority be unquestionable if it was to be believable at all and so terribly thorough as to leave no portion of an individual's existence, either physically, emotionally, mentally or spiritually to be determined by any lowly individual; it was a form of absolute slavery that by necessity demanded absolute obedience.  The Catholic Church became so thoroughly authoritative in all of European society that it became the very sanctioning power of all the Royal monarchies; the Divine Right of Kings.  Because the Church took its authority directly from the divinity as was supposedly the function of the Pope, it necessarily dictated the governing tenets of the individual's spirituality and moral behavior and shared this authority with the reigning monarchs.  Most all men and women had no right to determine the individual destiny of either their body or soul; they were after all, only slaves.  I can understand how difficult this idea must be to comprehend by the average American who is led to believe that they have these inalienable rights guaranteed to them by their government, which is also responsible for the maintenance of these inalienable rights.  Our culture has become so thoroughly invested with the erroneous beliefs in a supreme God and the acceptance of the moral-authority of religion that there remains no further need to convince most citizens of this egregious religious travesty; one nation under God.  All that remains for Western religions, particularly Christianity is simply the maintenance of the structures and functions of the various religions.  If you want to check this out, you might wish to attend church this next Sunday.
          It was understood that if the Church was to achieve its goal of absolute obedience of its subjects to the moral authority of the Church, it was reasonably necessary to dictate and control all of the various behaviors of any given individual; it has certainly accomplish this through body, mind and soul.  It wasn't very unlike the training of your pet dog; go fetch, come hither, lie down and rollover.  You might as well roll over and die!  Inner  You might call this human training program as the strictest form of long-term discipline, and since the slaves were to have no personal freedoms whatsoever, the moral authority dictated every aspect of their life, seen and unseen.  The unseen, thought, personal and spiritual domain came under the moral authority of the Church.  The personal and spiritual brainwashing at the hands of the Church was so thorough and prevailed throughout so many generations of Europeans without challenge that it wasn't until the 15th and 16th Centuries that there was even the slightest consideration for an alternative.  By the time that the Catholic Church was finally seen for its political corruption and spiritual inconsistencies the very conception of the existence of a God was so thoroughly incorporated into the cultural mind that the only alternative was the continuation of Christianity, only without the absolute authority of the Pope.  Combine the ingrained moral authority of the Church with the human enjoyment and exercise of power by the spiritual vicars of the church and it is easy to comprehend that the Protestant clergy was not about to abdicate the corrupted political moral authority handed down to them by default from the Roman Catholic Church.
          Even in America, where it was idealized that there should be no moral authority originating from any particular religion or church that would be permitted to be exercised in our civil government; the separation of church and state just hasn't happened!  Moral authority that had become so synonymous with the doctrines and behavioral dictates of the Christian Church had likewise become synonymous and confused with the basic concepts of any civilized culture.  After all, there was too little distinction between the authority of the church or the government.  The original Ten Commandments that are understandably the very basis of our Western laws were essentially and still remain prescribed as civil and not religious constraints on man's social behavior.  There appears to be some confusion as to what are considered as being civil laws as opposed to those religious and moral dictates of the church.  A good example of this confusion is the definition of a marriage.  In the Catholic Church marriage is considered a sacrament and as such is a ceremony that takes place in the church and under the direct auspices of only an ordained priest.  The marriage of two people has been practiced as a religious sacrament for so long as the very definition of a marriage has been confused with a civil contract governing the relationship of two individuals.  Even in America, where it has become ideologically impossible to separate church and state laws it is virtually impossible for the average citizen to even begin to comprehend a civil contract between two adults of the same sex.  The inability to make this distinction has become a socio-psychological pathology for which there appears to be no immediate cure.  We continue to suffer some of the terrible ills of this inability to comprehend this separation to this very day despite the idealization and the initial proposal for insuring and protecting our “individual rights” as was so succinctly proposed by the American’s Founding Fathers.  It sadly appears that our government wishes to remain under the watchful eye and control of what might be so damn parenthetically called its heavenly Father.  Even with the watchful eye of this heavenly Father, there remains these unfortunate hordes of disenfranchised citizens simply because there is and remains an ideological mass confusion and conflict between what is purported to being democratic ‘majority rule’ versus our most sacred and yet violated immutable ‘individual rights.’  These rights are most simply not ‘individual’ as long as they are decided upon by what is referred to as a majority.  Understand that this is not just a gay rights issue as historically there have been laws against interracial marriages as well as the social stigma associated with a man and woman living together without the benefit of a marriage.  Marriage in America has been both a civil and religious institution.  I'm not sure that a divorce rate in excess of fifty percent lends any credibility to the majority for deciding the ultimate civil definition of a marriage.  Such a failure rate indicates to me that the average American, usually Christian, citizen has too little understanding of the word commitment, which has little or nothing to do with sex unless of course one is cheating on their spouse; another incredibly high statistic.|
          Even with all the political and ideological ideals of our Founding Fathers, the very word, individual, simply did not include women as is evidenced by the reality that women only received the right to vote almost 150 years after the founding of this “free and equal” country.  It may also be of some interest to note that there were still seven states that denied women the civil right to own property, sole and separate from their husbands, in the mid-1960s when civil rights were finally granted to another group of disenfranchised Americans; Americans of African heritage.  Besides the discriminating and differentiation between man and woman politically, there remained in the earlier part of the 20th century a number of social taboos as totally innocuous as the smoking of cigarettes by women or their refusal to the observer the overly-conservative manner of dress.  One of the most oppressive and demeaning political statements of our earlier Americans was the presence of laws on the books of a New England State that actually dictated under what conditions and with what nature of cane was a man permitted to beat his wife; no doubt just one of the ‘legal’ precursors to today's domestic abuse and violence.  It was once illegal for an African-American to marry a white person and at the writing of this book, in the election year of 2004, there were some eleven states that had initiatives on their ballots to add to their state constitutions an amendment that would define the legal definition of a marriage to be only between a man and a woman; in some of these states even domestic partnerships were excluded from political recognition.  What is wrong with this picture?  It was later disclosed that moral issues as dictated by the majority Christian churches had a greater influence on our own individuals that voted as opposed individual civil rights.  I guess that means that I'm an immoral son of a bitch!  I don't believe that my Christian mom would have appreciated that vulgar designation!
          We are still plagued with the idea that it is the government that should determine the nature and extent of an individual's even private behavior, irregardless of whether that behavior might or might not be injurious to one's neighbor.  “I just don't like what my neighbor is doing in the privacy of his or her bedroom.”  The fact that I might choose to live and cohabitation with another man and enjoy all the legal rights and benefits that are afforded a heterosexual couple should be entirely of my own free choice.  I am legally bound not to discriminate according to one's sex.  So I would naturally be violating the law if I refused to marry another citizen because of their sex.  I should be treated equally and with the same personal and legal respect that is accorded to any other law-abiding, taxpaying, educated, peaceful, spiritual and civil Americans citizen.  My sexuality is my own private business and who I wish to share my life with is likewise only my business.
          Authority and the exercise of power has become the bottom line in America, and I am one who appreciates the subtle humor and play on the words of the Golden Rule; “He who has the Gold, Rules.”  Besides the inherent power of money (gold), there is the serious contention that power also resides in knowledge; the truth!  Even Jesus recognized that power of the truth to rid one of the awful shackles of lies and ignorance.  The question becomes and is simply, “What is the truth?”  The Christian will almost unanimously contend that only they are in sole possession of the truth and that their truth is based on the “Word of God” that is considered irrefutable according to their own interpretation; they exclude all others from access to their heavenly domain where they are to enjoy an eternal bliss in the presence of their ‘loving’ God.  It is not within my intellectual nor spiritual domain to decide for you or anyone else, what is the truth or what you should choose to believe; you and I should only be concerned with reality, whatever that ultimate reality might be to either of us.  It has been supposedly the exclusive domain of religions to dictate to you, the truth, but of course, only if you so freely choose to accept their countless notions and interpretations.  I choose the path to my own freedom!  Buddha chose the path to enlightenment.  Neither of us chose God!
          As long as there exists, any constraints on our individual expression, beliefs and moral behavior that should have no effect on others, we’re simply not free nor do we live in a truly free society.  I would still adamantly contend that no one should “believe” anything that I'd choose to tell them to be the truth.  As I have said earlier on, “If it is not self-evident to you then please move on because what might be true for me, might simply not be true for you.”  There are some basic realities and now that man has advanced to the profound understanding of some of those biological, physiological, physical and universal realities, those creative mythologies of our past history should no longer hold the power that they once held over the way that we think, and most certainly the way that we see, approach and experience our universe.
          So far I have said there is no God nor is there any evidence of a Supreme Being or universal force that is a reality outside the confines of our imaginations.  To truly believe that there is a God, abdicates our freedoms in all areas of our life.  There are no true restraints that could be rightfully or universally placed on any man or woman that is in any way a reality.  I do hold to the concept that all men and women are created equal, and what that specifically means is that all men and women should have the same equally administered rights, the same rights to express themselves and to be who they are; even the freedom to abdicate one's inalienable rights and freedom to the belief in a superfluous God.  There is another reality, and that is simply the reality that, all men and women are not necessarily created equal in terms of their physiological, emotional or psychological differences.  I would hope to celebrate those differences rather than to use those differences as a means of discrimination.  I suppose that I am a consummate libertarian!
          To this point I had stressed some of the basic and individual freedoms that are more commonly oppressed by the terribly imposed moral authority that is inherent specifically to Christianity and more generally to all other religions.  There are some oppressions that should be eliminated simply because they are founded on moral issues as defined by the church without regard to science or for the ultimate benefit to mankind.  This Christian moral conservatism in America stands in the way of some of our greatest advancements in science.  There are perhaps two closely related political issues that are in conflict with the exercise of the moral authority of Christianity.  The first of these is the matter of abortion.  I personally and certainly don't ‘believe’ in or condone the practice of abortion; it's simply not for me, as I would hope that I would be responsible for my sexual actions, and that if I was responsible for the creation of a child, I would do everything to see that that child reached adulthood.  At the same time, I would not interfere with the choice of any man or woman to choose abortion.  That may or may not be a moral decision depending on your religious beliefs, and in any case, I have no right to tell anyone how they should conduct their life in any fashion.  For me, the birth of an unwanted child is as equally horrid as any abortion.  As a psychotherapist, I could probably write an entire book on the subject.  It is perhaps and essentially a matter of birth control and I have no right to tell anybody how to conduct their lives in the private area of birth control and it should remain the sole decision of the individuals involved.  The other area of specific concern is stem cell research.  If man has the science and the knowledge for saving lives through stem cell research, surely any sound medical initiative should not be challenged based on anything that is religious in nature.  The preservation and sanctity of life should be paramount in any moral society whether it is religious or not.  As long as there is no threat to human life in any form, medical research that might preserve life should be condoned for the benefit and preservation of the living.
          I expect to have the respect of my fellow human beings to the same and equal degree to which I give them my respect, and I fully respect each and every individual enough to grant them their right to live their life in any fashion that they see fit so long as it doesn't harm me or anyone else.  That is the only reality that is important for any or all of us to share, and anyone who believes or holds any notion contrary to that basic freedom of choice should be isolated from society and simply denied all of their basic freedoms; “Judge not, for with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged.”  That unjustified denial of individual freedom is singularly, and of itself, the greatest of all iniquities or sins.  Consider that “evil is simply the absence of love.”  The very absence of respect and love for one another, as well as for yourself, is an egregious violation of the one and only commandment that Jesus had lovingly prescribed for all of us to follow; love yourself and love your neighbor, it is upon this singular commandment that rests the entirety of the law!
          There is actually nothing oppressive about true love and as it is said, “It is more blessed to give than it is to receive.”  If love was the only and true anchor of all Christianity, then I would not hesitate to encourage every earthling to enthusiastically embrace that one religion.  Jesus had requested of his disciples to go forth to the entire world and teach this one commandment; it wasn't to make everyone a Christian.  The reality is, one can truly love their neighbor without any regard as to what religion is freely embraced or practiced by any given individual.  In fact, there is no religion or God required for the simple act of loving one's neighbor and the reward is truly greater than some felonious eternal bliss.