[atari 2600]

Verily I say unto thee that it has been written
(many times before, by me haha)
that all religions promptly turn increasingly dogmatic and unreasonable after the prophet dies and leaves a power vaccuum in the wake of their passing.

Now, to "blame God" for any of this is a sign of a very weak character and an immature victim's mentality. Besides, "God" isn't a personage to blame. How can one blame gravitational and electromagnetic forces for anything?

Go ahead and critique religion all you want. But, like religion itself does most of the time, please just leave God out of it. The world needs to certainly be more aware concerning academic research about the abuses of religious power and influence. Please be aware though that when you attack religion categorically, you, in many cases, are waging war on your own psyche by rejecting the value of religious wisdom. Bill Maher is doing a new documentary movie to attack religion and belief in God; he's a little full of himself in this regard. And, just a helpful hint: It would also help if you don't come across as a total burn-out.

It is clearly (for people with any level of real reading comprehension, I suppose) outlined in just about all religious, philosophical, artistic and psychological thought since the beginning of recorded history that one must take real responsibility for one's actions and behaviors and that the primary stumbling block to which each of us owe our lowly creatureliness is an unwavering, dogged faith in our own ego and our categorical psychological denial of our own eventual personal death.

Simply summed up, the woeful state of the world is tantamount to each of our individual failings to face our fears and the consequent false divisions and separations this creates; this is the meaning of Satan.

"Facing one's fears" is not as easy as (& probaby not even what) you think it is. First off, if you cannot meditate, then you haven't faced diddly squat. Please, spare me any lame rebuttals. Genuine prolonged physical and mental suffering is the only way to even make our stubborn minds even remotely receptive to the idea of even beginning to examine our deepest fears, and the actual state of our pathetic and perpetual possibility-rejecting lives of error.

All this being stated though, it is usually necessary for one to completely doubt the existence of God before one ever truly believes and this is part of the hypocrisy among religious believers that are essentially culturally herded via fearmongering into one form of institutional dogmatic religious thought or another. As Socrates reminds, "all philosophy begins with doubt."