Theory of Sex dot com

Religion in a nutshell:

1. If you look throughout history and across the globe, you will find that religion has been strongest in times and areas where people were unhappy, uneducated, and poor. Alternatively, as people become educated, wealthy, and happy with their life, religion takes a back stage, and people tend to forget about it all together. They become "socially religious" - only going to major services out of habit.

Thus, wealth, education, and happiness are the enemies of religion. Of course, religious leaders know this. Enjoying money, eating well, and having wild sex are completely sinful. Why else have we been indoctrinated to believe that sexual feelings are "dirty" or "bad". They are healthy, good, and human! But they cause the "flock" to leave the church, and with them leaves market share and MONEY. To survive, the church wants to keep people from achieving too much wealth or happiness - except if that money goes to them!

2. Have you noticed that the same life events that lead a secular young person into devout religious following are the same life events that lead to drug abuse, eating disorders, or shooting up schoolyards? Dissatisfaction with life in general, depression, lack of a social life, in ability to connect with peers, etc. They may join a major religion, or a cult, but the reasons are basically the same. I was in the subway and a preacher handed me a card showing a lonely down-and-out kid on the front. The attention grabber was, "Do you need a best friend? Jesus can be that friend."

I think I'd rather have an eating disorder or be addicted to drugs. At least they have people who can help you with those problems.

Richard Dawkins on Faith : "Faith is such a successful brainwasher in its own favor. But what after all is faith? It is a state of mind that leads people to believe something - it doesn't matter what - in the total absence of supporting evidence. If there were any supporting evidence then faith would be superfluous, for the evidence would compel us to believe anyway. I don't want to argue that what a particular person believes in is necessarily daft. They may or may not be. The point here is that there is no way of deciding whether they are, and no way of preferring one article of faith over another, because evidence is explicitly eschewed. Faith cannot move mountains. But it is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness. Faith is powerful enough to immunize people against all appeals to pity, to forgiveness, to decent human feelings. It even immunizes them against fear, if they honestly believe that a martyr's death will send them straight to heaven. What a weapon! Religious faith deserves a chapter to itself in the annals of war technology, on an even footing with the longbow, the war horse, the tank, and the hydrogen bomb."