Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays

I sincerely hope everyone has a great Christmas or whatever other holiday you may be celebrating.  I hope everyone has friends and family they can relax with and whose company they enjoy.  This year of all years, we need that.  Every day now brings more light and who knows, maybe 2024 will bring more light to humanity.  As always I want to express my deepest appreciation for readers, who contribute to making this a useful and entertaining site for us all.

I have been reflecting on the role of religion in the ongoing development of humanity and ideally, civilization, although recently it seems more like devolution.  The message of Jesus and the emerging Christian religion was supposed to be one of peace and love.  The message itself is a powerful one that if adhered to would make the world a far better place.  Unfortunately, even Christians rarely hewed to Jesus’ teachings.  Like almost every other religion, Christianity became for some an excuse to demonize those who were not of the faith and to engage in wanton war and slaughter of the supposed enemies of Christendom.

But we have with us today a religion, very widely practiced, which is the absolute worst.  People want to tell me that Islam is a religion of peace, but even on a solemn holiday, I have to say that is bullshit.  This is a religion many of which’s leaders actively encourage the slaughter of those who do not accept the creed.  It isn’t just Jews, the leaders of Islam have made it clear that they intend to subjugate or kill Christians, Bhuddists, atheists, anyone who doesn’t accept their religion.  And this global jihad is accepted and supported by the vast majority of Muslims so don’t give me the crap about it is just a few bad apples who are violent sadists–it is a prime feature of the religion.  The world would be and will be far better off when Islam disappears off the earth.

It is a shame that religion as practiced is so destructive to humanity, because the core messages often are extremely valuable guides to a meaningful individual life and to the advancement of society and civilization.  For most people, having a religious faith or a guiding philosophy provides greater happiness and satisfaction with life.  It gives a sense of purpose and meaning to our short existence.  In the absence of that, as we see in America today, we become a goofball nation.  People engage in frivolous and self-destructive activities that only betoken the absence of any real sense of value in their lives.

So my Christmas message is; take the good out of religion and use it to give your lives a sense of purpose and to foster what advances civilization, and never use it as one more pretext for the violence to which humans are all too prone.