Since the beginning of history, and even before the dawn of civilization man has always had a belief in a greater being or beings. From the ancient Chinese, to the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations, all the way to Buddhism, and today's three monotheistic religions Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Man has always felt the never ending need to create a being greater then himself in order to give his life on this incredibly complicated earth some purpose. Before we had knowledge of the vastness of our infinite universe, or of the complexity of the human body, it was incredibly easy for the common man to fall in to the ranting and raving of these "so called men of gods" who proclaimed to have the answers to the unanswerable questions of which everyone so greatly craved. How did we get here? Why are we here? Where do we go when we die? The truth is that even today most of these questions go unanswered, but today we do have a much better idea of where stand. Ironically, over the years we have received actual tangible answers not from religion, but from their longstanding enemy, science. In 1610 Galileo Galilei proved that the sun did not revolve around the earth, but instead the earth revolved around the sun, even though the Catholic Church denounced this scientific fact to be "false and contrary to Scripture". In 1858 Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace, published their theory of evolution, and since it can now be seen in real time under a microscope when viruses quickly and constantly evolve in order to continue spreading, it has been accepted as fact by the scientific community. In 1921 Arthur Holmes concluded that the earth was 1.6-3 billion years old, although the current accepted age is around 5.4 billion years, and not the 6,000 years old of which the bible teaches, and many people still believe today. Still to this day many people including multiple elected officials of both the United States, and abroad believe these undeniable facts to be false and even blasphemous; this is one of the many reasons religion is a burden on mankind.

      From the time of early civilizations, religion has done far more harm than it has done good. There are multiple examples throughout history where man’s grip on his religious beliefs have led to mass killings, genocide, war, terrorism, and most importantly, a never ending persecution of the abilities of the human mind. For example take the Aztec empire, who ruled most of lower Mexico and upper Central America for over 200 years. Although human sacrifice was being practiced all over the world (all for religious purposes), the Aztecs took this gruesome practice to an unprecedented level, at their most extreme, sacrificing thousands of people per day. Now when people think of the Aztecs and other Indian tribes, most think of savage people living off the land in tee pees and wigwams. If that is the case, you are drastically wrong, at least when it came to the Aztecs. Their capital city, Tenochtitlan, was home to more than 300,000 people, and housed paved streets and a public works system that rivaled the most civilized of European cities. So we are not just talking about a bunch of savages running around naked, these were a sophisticated people, who instead of using their rational minds, turned to their religious beliefs to solve their problems of draught, disease, and war. But instead of solving these very real problems, they fueled the fires by killing off most of their working and fighting force.

      Now most people reading this are probably thinking, “Well yeah, I guess that’s bad, but my religion would never do something like that.” If you’re a Christian, you are severely misinformed. The Catholic Church and biblical faith in general have been behind, what is in my opinion, some of the darkest periods in human history. Let’s start with an incredibly important man in the history of the world, Christopher Columbus. Almost every grade school, high school, and even some college students are fed a completely misleading story of this so called “discoverer”. We are told this romantic story of Columbus coming ashore, and peacefully exchanging gifts with his dark and naked brethren, then running off into the sunset hand in hand to live happily ever after. This is so far from the truth, it should be called what it is, a bold faced lie. For the truth we can only turn to one man, the Roman Catholic Priest Bartolomé de las Casas, who witnessed Columbus’s actions first hand, and had access to Columbus’s now lost journals.

      Columbus’s first journal entries start off similar to what they teach in high schools, “They brought us parrots and balls of cotton… and many other things, which they exchanged for glass beads…. They willingly traded everything they owned.” Sounds somewhat familiar, this is probably where high school teachers stopped reading, but it gets much better. “They do not bear arms, and do not know them… they would make fine servants… with fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.” Interesting, that’s a quote my teacher never read aloud. These Caribbean Indians were known for their hospitality and generosity, unlike Europeans at a time, who were used to following the examples of their greedy rulers, cardinals, and popes. Columbus began to interrogate the natives, looking for what he wanted the most, gold. He had promised the king and queen of Spain many riches, and he was going to do everything in his power to get them.

      Soon after finding land, Columbus sailed home with a couple handfuls of Indian prisoners to show off to the Spanish King and queen. After promising an unlimited amount of gold and slaves he left for his second voyage with seventeen ships and twelve hundred men, stating “Thus the eternal God, our Lord, gives victory to those who follow his way over apparent impossibilities." Which in my understanding means that since these Indians were not baptized Christians they had no right to live. Is this what Columbus’s God really wanted? Columbus started in Haiti, unable to find any gold, he rounded up fifteen hundred Indians, chose the top five hundred specimens, and shipped them off to Spain, two hundred of whom died in route. The ones who survived were sold by of all people, the archdeacon of the town. Columbus later wrote “Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold."

      Desperate to find gold Columbus ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months, which was nearly impossible because the island contained a very small amount of gold. The fortunate ones that brought the gold back were given a copper necklace. All those found without a copper necklace had their hands cut off and were left to bleed to death. Now why were we never taught this in school? We weren’t taught this because throughout history the story is always told through the eyes of the conqueror, not the oppressed. As Las Casas’s journal goes on the true story begins to unfold. The Indians, unable to defend themselves against a much better armed enemy, began committing mass suicides, and it is estimated that by 1508, on the single island of Haiti, 125,000 of the 250,000 Arawak Indians died by either murder, mutilation, or suicide. By 1550 only five hundred Indians remained, and by 1650 the entire population was exterminated. Las Casas goes on to describe the multiple atrocities performed by Columbus and the Spaniards, all in the name of God.

      “The Admiral… so anxious to please the king that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians.”

     “The Spaniards thought nothing of knifing Indians by the tens and twenties and of cutting slices off of them to test the sharpness of their blades.”

“The Spaniards grew more conceited everyday and after a while refused to walk any distance and rode the backs of the Indians if they were in a hurry.”

      ”As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months.”

      “So that from 1494 to 1508, over 3 million people have perished from war, slavery, and mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it…My eyes have seen these attacks so foreign to human nature, and I now tremble as I write…”

      Columbus didn’t discover the Americas he invaded them, and killed of the people who did discover them 20,000 years ago. Although it is not entirely religions fault that these atrocities happened it is the fact that the perpetrators committing them used their beliefs to justify and encourage what they were doing. And we celebrate a Columbus Day? Wrong? You be the judge. It is to late to blame or condemn Columbus, it would serve no purpose.  Instead we need to simply be informed of the facts, and know why these things happened, so they never happen again. 150 years later similar barbarity continued in the name of God by of all people, the Puritans, made famous by the celebration of Thanksgiving. They justified their mass killings of Indians by turning to the bible. Psalms 2:8 “Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance”, or when they wanted to take land they turned to Romans 13:2 “Whoever so resist the power, resist the ordinance of God; and they that resist should receive to themselves damnation.” The 10 million Indians that lived north of Mexico pre-Columbus was reduced to less than one million.

      Even though my original intent for this blog was not to teach a long and drawn out history lesson, I think history to be exceptionally important, especially stories like Columbus, which are kept in the dark. For my next blasphemous bit of facts, I want to mention one of the oldest, richest, and corrupt corporations in the world, the Catholic Church. First I want to specify that I don’t have it out especially for Catholicism or Christianity more than other religions, but I was raised Catholic, so over the years I have learned to challenge its policies harsher than others. As I said earlier I believe that the Church has a dark history, and that many of these bad traditions are carrying over to present times. The worst of these crimes against humanity being the Spanish Inquisition, one of a total four inquisitions that took place between 1184 all the way up to 1860, killing thousands of so-called “heretics” or more precisely, innocent people either with free thinking minds searching for the truth, or those who condemned the church for what it really was, corrupt. The inquisition was launched near the start of the Renaissance Era, when its thousand-year-old grip around most of the European world began to slip. How is this mass killing and torturing of innocent people any different than that of the Aztecs? The answer is, nothing, except that the Aztecs thought they were killing to save their people from starvation and war, some even died willingly. Do you think the Church cared if any of these Protestants, Lutherans, or intellectuals went to hell? No, but they did care if they were giving their hard earned money to a different church, or if a scientist was challenging their teachings. It was at this time that people first began to challenge both the church’s teachings and practices. They no longer excepted the answer, “Just have faith my son”, which they learned just fifty years earlier got them absolutely nowhere at a time when the truly needed science. The Black Death struck Europe in 1348, and since most medical practices were considered witchcraft, the people had no one to turn to, accept of course the God Almighty, who saw that 60% of the European population was wiped out by 1400, but I guess it was meant to be, just as the slaughtering of millions of innocent Indians was God’s will. 2,000 years before the Black Death, ancient doctors of Rome and Greece were practicing surgeries such as brain and eye surgery, so advanced that we still use very similar procedures today. These ancient men, who used science and reasoning, instead of turning to a then 1,500 year old book, would have been far better prepared for the Black Death.

      The inquisition was originally launched for the purpose of slowing the spread of both Lutheranism and Protestantism. Both of these branches of Christianity were formed because people were fed up. They fed up with having to pay the priest to forgive their sins enough to get to heaven, fed up with hearing cardinals and priests preach of virtues such as generosity, but eat and drank far better meals than anyone else and lived in giant estates. Popes who preached of celibacy, but went home to mistresses and fathered bastard children whom they placed in positions of power. They preached of honesty, but bribed, stole, and even murdered in order to get what they wanted. They were fed up just like people today are fed up, or at least they should be, with the same sermons, as priests all over the world repeatedly rape thousands young boys, yet never see a prison cell. Sick of seeing a pope who walks out of one of his many giant mansions, wearing thousand dollar silk ropes and slippers, while bracing himself with a 24 carat gold staff, only to step into his $150,000 armor plated limo. The pope and all the cardinals live in absolute luxury yet more than 25,000 people around the world die each day of starvation, or close to 10 million people a year, (United Nations, statistic, 2003) and over 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day. That’s over four times the U.S. population. Oh I forgot again, this must be meant to be, therefore God’s will. Maybe it’s because most of these people that are dying are “heathens”, so don’t worry they won’t be hogging up all your space in heaven.

      The churches raging inquisition eventually turned its attention towards intellectuals. Scientist of all fields, including Galileo himself, were called to Rome, and forced to either recant their findings, or be executed. Just like it did with the field of medicine, as I previously stated, biblical beliefs had a devastating effect on the progress of the scientific revolution, and continues to affect the progress of science today. For example we are at least 30 years behind in our knowledge of the capabilities of stem cell surgery, which could benefit hundreds of millions of people around the world who suffer from conditions such as diabetes or others like myself with spinal cord injuries. All because the church believes stem cell research to be immoral. Are they qualified to teach morals? In some ways the inquisition still continues. Just this year two Brazilian doctors were excommunicated by his highness the pope for performing an abortion on an 11-year-old girl who was raped, and whose hips were too narrow to house the baby without shattering her pelvis. If that doesn’t make you proud to be a Catholic, I don’t know what will.

      Then there is the Church’s and Christians in general, hypocrisy on the issue of equality. The United States was founded by Christian men, all of whom were slave owners, who carried over their Christian belief that all people are created equally, and wrote it in to their new constitution. What they forgot to write was that they believed that all people, or as the worded it “men”, are created equally, as long as they were a white-Christian-heterosexual male. If you weren’t a white land owning male in early America you had close to no rights, if you were a women you had no rights, and if you were an Indian or black, you were little better than an animal. The Civil Rights Act may have been passed in 1964, and women may have received suffrage in 1920, but gays still can’t get married, women still can’t be priest, and I’ve meet very few Christians that weren’t prejudice against at least one of these groups. The Church argues that gay marriage would take away from the sanctity of marriage, yet straight couples defy the sanctity of marriage every day with adultery and divorce. For example Republican senator John Ensign of Nevada, a devout Christian like most Republicans, admitted to having an affair in June of this year, yet he voted against gay marriage every time. Did his actions not take away from the sanctity of marriage?

      Recent politics out of Washington have been exceedingly eye-opening to the harm religion can do. One of my favorite is that in 2003 with the intention of receiving support in Iraq, the leader of the “free world”, President Bush, told the former president of France, Jacques Chirac, that “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.” Now that’s as fanatical as it gets. Gog and Magog are demons that appear in the books of Ezekiel and revelations, and President Bush used this as his reason for killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Does this make us any different then radical Islamic countries like Iran? We know there were no nuclear weapons in Iraq, or ties to Al Qaeda. So we can only hope that Bush chose to invade Iraq for oil and corporate reasons, and not because he believed that two fictional demons out of a 2,000 year old book were “afoot in the middle east”. Quotes like this come out of Republicans mouths almost daily. Most Republicans deny all of the irrefutable facts on global warming, accumulated from thousands of scientists from almost every developed country, who all have PhD’s in environmental studies and an un-listable amount of qualifications, but of course they don’t know the bible. One of the leaders of these Republican geniuses is Congressmen John Shimkus, who is on the U.S. House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment. I’ll let the video speak for itself. I’ll understand if you can’t make it through the entire thing, I couldn’t either.

      The most disturbing of recent news is that of Erik Prince and his multimillion dollar company, Blackwater. Blackwater is a private mercenary company, who has had over $300 million worth of contracts with the U.S. State Department since 2004 and has been utilized in wars over seas for over ten years. Multiple sworn affidavits lodged by Blackwater employees include allegations as serious as murder, weapons smuggling, and intentional killings of Iraqi citizens. On September 16, 2007 Blackwater guards gunned down 17 innocent civilians including women, which is only one of many cases of so-called “unprovoked” attacks. An ex-top employee said that Erik Prince, who is responsible for the hiring and training of the majority of the estimated 100,000 mercenary troops overseas, “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” and that he “encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life.” That sounds like something Christ would say. Also Joseph Schmitz the COO, or chief operating officer, of the company is a fanatical preacher of what he calls “Christian Supremacy”, saying that it is a “rule of law under God that America’s role in the world is to bring God’s law to all humanity” Here are a few more quotes by the conservative-right wing.

      “If I see someone [who] comes in that’s got a diaper on his head and a fan belt wrapped around the diaper on his head, that guy needs to be pulled over,” said Congressman Cooksey, a Republican member from Louisiana who sits on the International Relations Subcommittee for the Middle East and South Asia.

      Syndicated columnist Ann Coulter said America “should invade their [Muslim] countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” Coulter also called for the “mass deportation of Muslims.”

      This finally brings me to Islam, a once peaceful religion, which has been poisoned by decades of constant war, death, and the devastation of both their land and their people. Even though most Jews and Christians refuse to believe it, mainly because they are simply ignorant of the facts, they do in fact have the same God. Different teachings, customs, and beliefs maybe, but they do share the belief in one Abrahamic God. Another widespread misunderstanding of the Islamic faith is that they believe that killing innocent people will somehow get them to paradise with 1,000 willing virgins. This couldn’t be farther from the truth, in fact the Qur’an has numerous teaching of compassion, giving, and peace, including the quote made famous by Barack Obama’s Cairo speech, “to kill one innocent human being is to kill all mankind, and to save one human is to save all mankind.” Does it also preach of outlandish inequalities towards women? Yes, but one most remember that it was written close to 1,500 years ago, at a time when nearly every culture discriminated against women’s rights, except of course for those “heathen” and “barbaric” North American tribes, who allowed women to be tribal chiefs for thousands of years. How dare they go against God’s teachings like that? It is not until men take these centuries old fictional books and read them as factual, when problems arise.

      Then where does this perpetual hatred of everything western or non-Muslim come from? It originates from the same place that a lot of other modern day religious fundamentalism comes from, a combination of both people of strong religious faith who are backed against a wall, and men who use it as a way to gain power and influence. These young and vulnerable boys, who become future Taliban and Al Qaeda soldiers and suicide bombers, grow up witnessing nothing but death, hatred, and poverty. The Middle East is a perfect breeding ground for Islamic fundamentalism, thanks mainly to the U.S., but that’s an entire different story. Even though 14 of the 19 hijackers of the 9/11 attacks were from Saudi Arabia, and not war torn countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, they were brainwashed at a young age in state founded Wahhabi madrassas. While most Taliban and Al Qaeda members are extreme religious radicals, some Taliban officers have said in interviews that they are not doing what they are doing because they actually believe it to be God’s will, but because they make so much money from opium and gun smuggling it’s hard to turn down. But the easiest way to get young boys into the cause is to either kidnap them and brainwash them by using select Qur’an phrases, or by offering them money and then brainwashing them, they prefer the latter. How is what these Islamic radicals do in order to spread their beliefs and gain power through violence and war, and then justify their actions with religious scripture, any different from what Columbus, The Catholic Church, George Bush, or Erik Prince did? The only differences are that these other culprits, especially those involved in the war in Iraq, killed and still kill far more innocent people, and worst of all, get away with it. Columbus was never branded a terrorist nor was George Bush of Dick Cheney. On the contrary Columbus was celebrated as a hero, and Bush and Cheney walked away without a single charge even though they repeatedly lied to the American people, and have the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives on their hands.

      There are an unspeakable amount of other religious problems that effected our past and continue to plague us today. I didn’t even cover things like the Salem witch trials, the controversies of the bible, and how most of the Christian faith is borrowed from other religions, or the multiple religious sects in America today, including ones that deem it ok to marry an eleven year old girl to a forty year old man. Of course that’s what we are supposed to do right? Not speak of these things, or challenge our centuries old religions, which have really only been around a short amount of time considering the human species is over 200,000 years old. Where was God or Buddha then? Why shouldn’t we ask these questions? Are there other life forms out there? If so, who are their gods? The truth is that there are trillions of planets just like ours, which revolve around hundreds of trillions of other stars just like the sun, in solar systems that are just like ours, which are in an uncountable number of galaxies just like the Milky Way?

      I remember when I first started expressing my feelings of religion to a group of classmates. Most had disgusted looks on their faces, some shook their heads in agreement, but one girl stood up, and before storming out said “I’m sorry, but I hope you go to hell!” I was so happy she said it to; because in a single statement she proved that everything that I had just argued was true. Here was this seeming nice girl, whose religious beliefs flared up, and she was ready to condemn a complete stranger to a place that she supposedly believed was the worst place a human could go. Whether or not she really believed this, I don’t know, because people always say they believe that they will go to a better place when they die, yet they don’t kill themselves. Personally if I thought I could go to some heavenly place, and all I had to do was pull the trigger, why wouldn’t I do it? The truth is that most people really don’t believe these things, but they tell themselves it true to feel comfort and purpose in life. Can’t life itself be purposeful enough? All I argue is that one should turn to reasoning before one turns to praying. The human mind is so much better than being socialized into believing in a set of ideas not their own, without having the option of challenging what is presented before them. Everyone thinks that their religion is so much better and holier then all others. The truth is that religion works the same way as other aspects of culture such as language, if someone is born to Muslim parents in Indonesia, they are going to grow up practicing Islam and speaking Indonesian, and if someone is born to Buddhist parents in Tibet, they are going to grow up practicing Buddhism and speaking Tibetan. Just like Christian parents raise Christian children, and Jewish parents raise Jewish children. Therefore, no religion is better than any other; they are just all equally bad. It’s true history has already been written, but there is no reason to repeat our previous mistakes. So even though some might get some false comfort by going to their local church, synagogue, or mosque, every week, it’s time to stop being blinded by lies, and open our eyes to reasoning and the bigger picture.

                                                       Imagine

                                       Imagine there's no heaven,
                                              it's easy if you try,
                                              No hell below us,
                                             above us only sky,
                                         Imagine all the people,
                                              living for today.
                                    Imagine there's no countries,
                                             it isn't hard to do,
                                      Nothing to kill or die for,
                                           and no religion too,
                                         Imagine all the people,
                                           living life in peace.
                                     You may say I'm a dreamer,
                                       but I'm not the only one,
                                    I hope someday you'll join us,
                                    and the world will be as one.

                                     Imagine no possessions,
                                       I wonder if you can,
                                  No need for greed or hunger,
                                       a brotherhood of man,
                                         Imagine all the people,
                                          sharing all the world.
                                     You may say I'm a dreamer,
                                      but I'm not the only one,
                                 I hope someday you'll join us,
                                and the world will live as one.

                                                                                     John Lennon