by Andrew Werner

December 2003

from ReligionExposed Website

Spanish version

RELIGION
 

What is the basic purpose of religion?
Religion is designed to focus the people's attention and energy on a single, unchanging, uncompromising and invisible supreme being who allegedly created an inferior human race just for some extra companionship and love for himself and then supposedly foisted a set of oppressive and in some cases arbitrary rules on them, which if broken would be met with unimaginable punishment.

This keeps the followers in a continuing state of fear and compliance.

They are afraid to question the intentions of this invisible being and they are afraid of even expressing their own individuality in many cases. Christians and others are taught that they have virtually no power to do anything except pray, worship and do good deeds.

They are taught to practice self denial and are told that their own will is totally irrelevant. Religious followers believe that they are yielding their will over to a benevolent cosmic individual who has single-handedly created the whole universe and has their best interests at heart when in fact they are handing over their will and freedoms to hidden groups of religious elites for the elites own personal gains.

It appears that religion must constantly degrade and humiliate its followers in order to glorify and elevate its god. Unfortunately many people appear eager to give away their power to authority and seem to have a need and even a desire to be ruled and disciplined by it.

Worshipping gods is futile and is nothing more than an ancient primitive custom practiced by weak minded and superstitious people. It has no place in the 21^st century. The reason we have life in this world is to experience life in this world, not to spend our entire lives studying an old book, looking up to the sky and worshipping an invisible ruler in another realm.

The main method by which Christians in particular are trapped and deceived is with the messiah or saviour story. This is linked to the 'original sin' story which is designed to impose a large amount of guilt onto the whole of humanity. The believers are then so grateful that they have been saved by the son of God nearly 2000 years before they were born that in some cases they abandon all reason, logic and good judgment to obey and worship this god and his son.

Anyone who believes this story is indeed lost because to believe that a god would send his only son to help us, only to see his son get tortured and murdered, and then instead of unleashing all his wrath, simply absolve us from all crimes past and present, is pure madness to say the least.

Where is the lesson for us in that? What has been achieved? There is no lesson or purpose because it's all about mass psychological enslavement and disempowerment.

The so called god that we are expected to worship is undoubtedly just a dictator strawman concocted by the religious elites for the purpose of controlling the masses.

If there is a prime creator in this universe then it is unlikely that he would interfere and impose on us by foisting his arbitrary laws, let alone need and demand our frivolous worship and blind obedience. Neither of those things requires any level of mental aptitude or creativity. The intelligence and skills that's been given to many has gone totally to waste.

Many have lowered themselves to the pointless practice of hero worship.

Furthermore, Christianity, Islam and a few other religions are polarized religions. They are polarized against each other. One is believed to be good and the other is seen as bad. The funny thing is, is that each one thinks that their's is good and the other's is bad. In most ways they're both bad. The only good kind of religion is a neutral and all loving one.

Polarized religions have been devised by influential elite leaders to play the people off against each other. That way the elite can defeat and enslave the population practically without lifting a finger.

Religion is like a drug to some. And they need a 2000 year old hero to save them - from themselves that is!

The churches don't permit their followers to have any real truth and knowledge because that would empower the people too much so they spoon feed them kiddie stories, half truths, distortions and even lies and the followers value it highly even though they must spend the rest of their lives just making sense of it.

The irony is that religion is pretty much man made, so mankind has really brought this onto themselves.

The religious elites are not totally to blame because many people actually enjoy listening to mystical sounding stories, performing rituals, customs and traditions, playing polarity roles and dramas and waging battles against what they perceive to be a devil boogie man. They also have a secret fetish to be dominated and ruled with an iron fist by a supreme ruler or king.

After all these centuries people still haven't learned to take back their power and start taking responsibility for themselves .

 

IS THERE A GOD OR IS GOD JUST A SANTA FOR ADULTS?
 

What is God?
Is there a white bearded old man up there creating and presiding over everything?

If there is then what are all the zillions of other smart and creative souls doing in the cosmos besides sitting on their hands?

For millennia people have been asking this question but there is one thing that some have thought might be the answer, and that is that maybe collectively WE are God.

God might be like a computer CPU and we might be the millions of transistors inside it.

There is no master transistor (God) which gives life to all the others and on which all the others depend. We each function independently and also as one. One of the transistors (Jesus) did possibly emerge briefly to show us an example of a better way to operate but we are all equally part of the CPU as was he.

Essentially we could be God's guts.

Why would we need a big master when in the higher realms (which could be our destination), we will know everything and we will be able to govern ourselves?

We really have no real need to be ruled and dictated to.

 

WORSHIP
 

What is worship?
Worship is the act of sending/offering love, devotion and gratitude to a deity or idol.

They say that love is understanding and yet no one really understands God at all. How can you love something or someone whom you can neither understand or communicate with properly?

Love and worship is also about admiration, adoration and gratitude but how can one feel these things towards someone whom they've never seen or spent time with?

No God has ever asked anyone to worship him so man's desire to worship a deity is nothing more than an ego based need to make himself feel useful to a god who otherwise probably has no real use for anything man has to offer.

There is no evidence that whatever or whoever created us needs us to worship them because the probability is that if we were created by a god or an advanced race then they were doing it for their own purpose and agenda. Why would you worship someone just for carrying out their own agenda? Would an all powerful creator create a dysfunctional bunch of lemmings just for the purpose of worship? Why then give us intelligence, free choice, diversity, individuality and a strong will and then threaten to disown or terminate us as soon as we try to use them?

If a single true God does exist then creating a race of selfish, sinful, ignorant, arrogant, egotistical, money hungry and sex obsessed beings for the sole purpose of worshiping him would have to be the stupidest thing he's ever done.

It's fairly clear that some people have allowed themselves to become ignorant and dumbed-down by the pompous tradition of religion.

 

PRAYER
 

Is prayer effective?
Prayer is different from worship. Unfortunately there's little information given by religion on what makes up prayer and how to use it effectively, however there is an indication that it could start with something as simple as the focusing of a positive thought towards someone or oneself.

There have been scientific tests carried out which suggest that prayer can help heal people.

Unfortunately religion focuses on negativity mostly regarding humans and teaches followers to send all the positive energy up to God. The problem here is that this positive energy is desperately needed down here on earth because here is where all the problems are that need to be solved.

We should be sending positive vibes to each other to heal each other, end wars and foster harmony, not up to the well endowed gods who have no need for it.
 

CHRISTIANS: GOOD PEOPLE OR UNWARY TOOLS FOR EVIL?
 

Are religious followers including Christians "all serving" (good) or "self serving" (bad) individuals?
Christians believe they are good, however :

- They serve only their God who is king and anyone who opposes their doctrine about him is automatically damned. No questions asked.

- The heaven carrot is dangled in front of them by their religion so they do what ever it takes to get there. That is not "service to all" because many are only good so they can get their big rewards and avoid hell.

- They want others to go to heaven too but their religion has robbed them of their free will by instilling fear
and telling them that their will is irrelevant. They then go out and violate other people's free will as well by preaching their dogma and vilifying (and even killing) them if they don't comply. They believe that anyone who does not obey their god's rules is not worthy and are therefore classed below them. That is prejudice and bigotry. They pass judgment in the name of their god on those who do not accept their fear based tenets. They don't understand that you cannot judge someone if you don't know all their circumstances and reasons and no one can possibly know everything about what led to aparticular person's actions or what their true thoughts or intentions were.

- They preach disempowerment and ignorance which leads people into deception where they often become
accessories to evil. Evil in many cases uses ignorant and dumbed-down individuals to do its work.

- Christians etc. cannot avoid so called sin because their religion is based on sin. Sin is attached to them like a ball and chain and they cannot escape it or change direction until they're dead. They cannot stop breaking their god's laws, because due to the fact that they are oppressed, they are subconsciously in constant rebellion against those oppressive laws. Also they are all tared with the same "sinner" brush from birth so
that is the role they will inevitably play out.

- Their religion is based on three things - fear, distortion of information, and obedience. Fear is the basis of all negative emotions which they are told to avoid. Their god on the other hand has no qualms what so ever about expressing these negative emotions through his frequent acts of wrath and mass murder. He therefore makes a very bad example by his actions.

Information leads to knowledge and knowledge is light but there is very little light where information is suppressed or distorted.

Obedience without knowledge is slavery. The slavery of religion is far worse because all you get for your pain and hard
efforts in life is weekly ambiguous promises that one day you might get to heaven if you're good. The problem with this is that no one is really sure what God considers to be good, so the followers spend their entire lives in a state of uncertainty.

Christians etc. believe that they get as much knowledge as they need from their bible/koran etc. but they don't know
that that's only a fraction of the knowledge that exists, and worse, their books are full of half truths, distortions and
omissions.

They are taught that they need no more knowledge than what their god (i.e. the religious leaders) decide they should
have and they are taught not to question it any further but to just believe or they'll be punished. The conclusion is that religious followers are not "all serving" individuals.

They have allowed themselves to become willing pawns for a dark and tyrannical regime/god whose only interests are control and exploitation.
 

JESUS: SAVIOUR OR TEACHER?
 

Did Jesus come here to save us or was it to teach us to save ourselves?
Saving or taking care of people is a high purpose but teaching people to save or take care of themselves and each other is an even higher one.

Jesus tried to teach people to think for themselves and care for each other but Christianity twisted his words around to say that we have to always rely on a single supreme ruler to take care of us and save us whenever we screw up.

Those who do not learn to take care of themselves will need someone else to take care of them for the rest of eternity whereas those who do, can not only take care of themselves but can go on to teach others to do the same, thus it spreads and humanity grows and evolves. The last thing religion wants is for humanity to evolve because then the religious leaders are out of a job.

If Jesus really taught us to rely only on him to be saved as well as everything else, and to just blindly obey an unseen god's simplistic rules and laws then he would have been a very poor teacher.

Humans who do not start thinking for themselves and throw off the doctrine and dogma of religion will never evolve to the next level.

Religious followers ask, how can religion possibly be bad if it honours our God, but once a person learns about the higher truths of the cosmos, and that the jealous, angry and vengeful god concept is a ploy to keep us in submission and stagnation, they will realize that Christianity and other religions are a lie and an abomination to divine creation because they are all about lowering peoples vibration through mass fear, personal disempowerment and forced ignorance and because ignorance leads to evil, ignorance itself is an evil.

Strangely enough, according to religion, ignorance is not a sin even though it is much worse than both envy and pride. Christians claim that Jesus said that he was exclusively God and that he was also God's one and only son. Jesus almost certainly never made such outlandish and arrogant claims. This was just something the Christian leaders dreamed up and wrote down out of their sycophantic passion.

Christ may have claimed to be God in a way but he almost certainly meant that he was a part of God as are equally the rest of us. In Psalms 82:6 and John 10:34 of the bible, God and Christ actually say "Ye are gods", yet Christians continue to turn a blind eye to this interesting piece of information. In fact the plural "gods" appears numerous times in the bible which pretty much blows out of the water the Christian proclamation that there is only one God in all of creation.

The fact that Christianity has been deceiving us is obvious because of the almost total absence of real information about who or what we humans are, where we came from and our purpose - our true history. The creation story in Genesis is a simplistic joke fit for kindergarten students only. It gives no detailed or useful descriptions of the whys and hows of our creation.

All useful information about us as a race has been systematically erased from history by the elites in order to make us think that this world is just some kind of after-thought that God decided to knock-up one rainy afternoon, and that we should feel privileged that he created us at all, and so now we must bow down and thank him and if we don't then he will get angry and wipe us all out.

The elites learned long ago that those who control the past (history) also control the present and future.

Many individuals will look for any opportunity they can get to give away their power and have themselves saved by someone so they don't have to take responsibility for their own future. Christ was the perfect candidate because he's no longer around to refute all the half truths and distortions in the bible which were mostly written and doctored hundreds of years after his death.

Religion is a power structure which feeds the people dogma to keep itself going financially as well as maintaining its power. Its greatest fears are knowledge, unity and co-operation among the people which would allow the people to become self sufficient at best and arrange an uprising against them at worst.

If it wasn't for the people's ignorance and desire to give away their personal power to authority, the entire clergy would be out of a job and would have to start working for a living. Religious ministers also enjoy tax exemptions by the way.

One only has to apply a little critical thinking to what religion puts forward to see the deception and subtle immoralities.

Concepts such as "Deliverance from sin" are obvious in their perversion of universal laws. How can one be saved from one's own transgression? We are here on earth to work through our issues and find practical solutions to our co-habitation problems with each other, not to be mysteriously absolved from the arbitrary rules and laws of (and by) an invisible and tyrannical deity. Another one is the "Gift of righteousness". Righteousness cannot be given as a gift. One has either chosen to be righteous in their actions or they haven't.

Probably the worst is the commandment "Thou shalt love the Lord your God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul,
and with all thy strength."

The problem with this one is that love that is commanded can never be true love because it hasn't come naturally. It has come from a place of fear and/or obedience and not from the heart. If that's the kind of love the Christian god wants then that's all he's going to get.

The fact that the god of the bible feels the need to command us to give him love indicates that he's not entirely confident that the splendour of his works and creations are going to be enough to gain our love so he makes it a commandment just in case.
 

HEAVEN: PARADISE OR EMPTY PROMISES
 

What will Christians do once they get to heaven?
Christians aren't told what they will be doing when they get to heaven.

As far as they know they'll just be worshipping God at his feet for the rest of eternity. That is not a proper existence, it is just an endless state of servitude, but it doesn't seem to bother religious followers in the least even though they have no clue what lies beyond this world. Christians are apparently not permitted to ascend in the way that the son of God does.

When they go to the after life they simply go from one life of servitude to another.

The real reason Christians cannot ascend is because they are living and experiencing someone else's truth, not their own truth. They have been taught by their religion to live and experience the truth of a tyrannical text based god and to just blindly obey him. They may never realize and experience their true potential, and living one's own truth is essential in order to evolve and grow.

Christians are taught that they are in this world to get to know God. This is nonsense since God, if he does exist, resides in a totally different dimension. Would you send your children to the farthest reaches of the globe to get to know you? You have to be with someone to get to know them.

Our Prime Creator, if there is one, probably exists a hundred or more dimensions above our 3^rd dimension. We are about as far away from our Creator as we can get. Even communication is difficult between distant dimensions, let alone interaction and governance. God trying to communicate with us would be like a human trying to communicate with ants. It would be completely futile. The same goes if ants were to try to worship a human.

We are not here to get to know God, we are here to experience all that can be experienced and to develop our own potentials and to sort out our differences so that we can learn to co-exist peacefully. In this world, our world, anything goes. We get to do what we want. We are here to make a statement about who we are. Here we get to write our own script for living. This is our stage and our show. A true creator would not interfere with its creation's natural development. Only a satanic god would.

Another major reason why Christians cannot evolve or ascend is because they have allowed themselves to be trapped in the low vibration of fear, prejudice, judgment and ignorance because of what they've been taught. As mentioned before, fear is the basis of all negative emotions and has the lowest vibrational frequency. Because the higher realms consist of high frequency vibrational energy, one has to have equal vibration in order to merge into there.

Until one releases themselves from fear based emotions, they will remain trapped in the cycle of this mortal dimensional matrix indefinitely. What Christians don't know is that even though they will probably get to go to their heaven as promised, the Christian heaven resides in the astral plane in the fourth or fifth dimension and is therefore still part of our earthly matrix, so they won't actually be too far away.

When they die and go to their astral plane heaven, they will only stay there for a short time and then they will cycle back down into this world again through reincarnation (which by the way is one of the many concepts that have been removed from the bible by the church fathers). True heaven is not a place that you go to but a state of mind and is something that one makes for ones self. The horrible truth is that religion is all about keeping its followers spiritually marooned in this dark matrix forever.

Religion constantly warns its followers to avoid hell but at the same time is ambiguous about exactly what one has to do to get to hell or heaven. This can only lead to fear, confusion and division among the population. Also each religion says totally different things which then causes even more confusion and conflict. The same goes for many other concepts which religion professes to know about.

Christians are constantly tempted with heaven and threatened with hell and then they're told that they have a choice - a "free choice" in fact (and also "free will" by the way (???)). This choice can be compared to the choice that a robber gives his victim - "your money or your life". Christians are so brainwashed that they cannot see that this is not a choice but an ultimatum, which makes the claim of "free choice" an outright lie for a start. A choice is between two or more viable and amicable options. Death or eternal suffering is not a viable or amicable option.

There is no future for someone who goes to hell and so it can never be a valid choice, it is merely a cowardly threat (given that we are small defenseless creatures). The god of the bible is an expert at making demands, threats and empty promises while hiding in another realm. Eternal worship and simple servitude are also not proper choices because worship and servitude are not proper ways to exist for an intelligent, creative and resourceful soul.

Another choice Catholics in particular are given is whether to have children after getting married or not. If they choose not to have children then once again they are threatened with possible eternal torture in hell. In a world with so much stress and money problems, God could be a little more understanding. It appears that religion is more of a slave production line than a loving family.

Christians are told lies that only one person can ever, and has ever ascended, and that is Jesus Christ, the purported only son of God. Jesus may have existed but he couldn't have been God's only son because there would be something wrong a with god who has only ever managed to produce one offspring.

Some Christians will argue that Jesus was God's only 'begotten' son - in other words the only spiritual/human hybrid. But we all have God's spirit breathed into us which makes us all spiritual/human hybrids, so why are the rest of us barred from ascending? Christians say it's because Jesus 'is' exclusively God. The truth is we are all equal parts of God, except the religious elites hope that we never find that out.

Many religions say that only a select few will make it to heaven and be with God. This is called exclusivism or elitism and is definitely not healthy for a society. It seems clear that the god of the bible, if he exists, is a tyrant and not the creator of all that is.

While a person continues to be a fundamentalist Christian, he/she can never evolve or ascend.
 

SIN: EVIL OR JUST ANOTHER SCARY WORD?
 

What is sin?
Sin is a word made up by religion to define a transgression or disobedience against its god's laws.

Many Christians point out that the word's exact translation means 'miss the mark', which wouldn't make any sense because the bible also says that the price of sin is death. Why would a creator torture and kill its creations just for missing the mark?

Sin is not inherently evil. It's just the inadvertent breaking of one or more of a particular deity's rules.

Religious people believe that the force that created us is an individual who has human-like feelings that can be hurt by the things we say, do or even think while we're in this physical world. They don't realize that only egos can be offended. Obviously the Christian god has an ego and an enormous one at that.

Believers believe that early man managed to somehow figure out exactly what this deity's likes, dislikes and will are through some visions, dreams and disembodied voices, and they believe that if we don't do exactly what he wants then he waits until we're dead and then he severely punishes us for putting a dent in his precious plans to gain some extra love and companionship for himself. It seems that this god is rather selfish as well as egotistical.

Why does a wonderful and omnipotent creator need extra love and companionship all of a sudden after being happy for eons and eons? Why if he has so much time on his hands did he feel he had to whip up the world in just six days? Why not instead make it all develop naturally and at its own pace? What was the big hurry? Because all of his angels abandoned him maybe?

That would be no surprise.

A deity who can only get people to love him by making them really dumb (putting them into human form) cannot be a wonderful deity in anyone's language, and a deity who can only forgive people by having his only son brutally mutilated and murdered, not to mention making billions of ordinary humans suffer and die over thousands of years, can only be described as profoundly psychotic and deranged.

And Christians are so indoctrinated that they believe that this is love just because the bible says it is. Anyone who can still think clearly can plainly see that Christianity is totally insane and that the Christian god strawman is himself the very definition of sin.

Humans are not sinners. Humans break divine laws for the same reason they break state laws. They are stressed - they're in a hurry - they don't think that the law applies to them. In the case of divine laws they usually do it out of stupidity, ignorance or adventurousness. This is human nature. Why should humans be prosecuted just for being human? We are a young race and we are young at heart. That's the way we were created. We learn through our mistakes but if we're constantly threatened with punishment then all we learn is how to be good slaves.

Sin is one of the things that will get a Christian/Muslim into hell. Getting into hell requires little effort other than doing something different to what your religion/deity has told you to do.

There are basically two things that will get you into hell.

1.- Choosing to believe or do other than what your church/bible/koran has told you to believe or do (in other words thinking for yourself)

2.- Not accepting your God's son as your saviour (Christianity)

Any decent, well intentioned, intelligent, free thinking, independent and self responsible individual can easily end up in hell without any problem.

Going to heaven is easy too but in a different way. You don't have to do much to go to heaven, only three things.

1.- Accept Jesus as your savior (Christianity)

2.- Be very obedient

3.- Believe everything you're told by your church/bible

It requires little intelligent thought. Basically you just have to train yourself to be as obedient as a trained dog. It doesn't require very many specific acts of good will either.

According to religious leaders the most valuable human qualities considered by God are total faith and belief, unquestioning obedience, and fear of authority and the unseen. Most other human qualities are apparently relatively useless to God. It's a funny coincidence that those were the very same qualities that were also much liked by those who used and traded slaves in the Middle East around 2000 years ago when the scriptures were written.

We are told that God gives us total unconditional love and yet he continues to place huge conditions on us and our future. It doesn't sound much like unconditional love at all. It sounds more like a former middle eastern dictator.

At least 'you know who' didn't make you burn and suffer for eternity.
 

FAITH: JUSTIFIED TRUST AND BELIEF OR BLISSFUL IGNORANCE?
 

What is faith?

Note: This section contains some non original content.

The option to doubt is what gives us the free will to explore all possibilities.

• If one has no doubts but only faith, as in religion, then one cannot properly exercise free will in day to day life

• Free will gives us the ability to accept or reject anything we are told and that is what makes us human and unique

• We as human beings have the capacity to understand ourselves and to realize our inner spiritual nature

• Religion seeks to divert our attention away from our inner self and focus it onto an invisible and inconceivable ruler god

• If we choose to buy into this then we are robbed of our personal power and individuality and the authorities can have their way with us

Religious followers put faith in religion's teachings and then make bunches of wild claims. And they can do that because religion's claims are so difficult to disprove.

They are difficult to disprove because it happened so long ago that all the witnesses and scribes are dead, and because God is basically a faceless entity. Also Christ hasn't been around for 2000 years so he's not available to rebuke any of the claims to set the record straight.

Therefore Christian scholars and church leaders could change or write whatever they like over the centuries, print it, and call it scripture.

Rejecting religion's doctrine of God does not result in hell and blindly believing in God does not result in heaven. Many on earth are already in a state of hell and many of them are religious followers. Many free thinking people are already experiencing heaven on earth and don't need to be dictated to by religion.

Love is complete acceptance and respect for another’s freedom and choices while always being ready to help them in all ways possible. If we are to believe that the god of the bible is the one true God then it is clear that this god doesn't love us at all but seeks only to interfere, manipulate and disempower us through fear, imposed ignorance and constant empty promises.

True love is the ability to make others feel special. The Christian god hasn't exactly succeeded in making any of his followers feel particularly special or valuable.

Everyone is special, but the god of the bible only seems intent on making us all into identical, helpless and miserable sheep with no self will or useful purpose.

 

GOD: KING BY PROXY OR CROWNED IDOL?
 

Why God could not possibly govern this world
Governing a world requires a physical presence, but the bible god has no physical presence here and his governance cannot be done by proxy through humans.

God, if he exists, is not of this world and therefore cannot properly communicate or interact with anyone here. Saying that Jesus walked the earth and was God or the son of God is not a valid claim because there is no evidence that Jesus was a bigger part of God than the rest of us are.

There is no evidence that he was the only son of God or even a representative of God except what humans have put into the bible as his purported words.

Evidence of his Godship has been claimed but evidence can be misinterpreted, misrepresented and exaggerated, especially over hundreds or thousands of years. Saying that Jesus was God is nothing more than a far fetched claim by religious zealots who are notorious for making such claims out of passion.

Jesus cannot be said to even be a representative of God's governing body because Jesus has not been around for nearly 2000 years. A government representative must have an active presence in order to see that things continue to run as required. One cannot govern a world for thirty odd years and then take off and expect the people to not twist and distort one's words and embellish one's stories.

Using a book such as a bible is also not a valid object of authority because there's no reason to believe that the bible actually contains the creator's own words, unless of course you want to take the bibles own word for it. Also many words and concepts cannot be properly translated, and the written word can be rewritten, slanted and distorted over time.

The best form of government is each persons own moral code based on love, compassion, common decency and respect for one another.

The promise of heaven and the threat of hell only really works on children. If everyone were to grow up and drop the fear based ravings of religion and just do onto others as they would have others do onto them then there would be less problems in the world.
 

DIVINE LAW: JUSTICE OR AN INVITATION FOR MISCHIEF?
 

Do God's methods work in practice?
God's laws are said to be fair and just.

The best way to guide someone to do the right thing is to advise them of what is best and then explain to them the consequences of doing things thoughtlessly. Informing the person of some of the pitfalls prompts the person to think and learn about what is best so they can grow in wisdom and experience life with safety.

On the other hand telling someone not to do something and then giving insufficient information, or worse, threatening abandonment, bodily harm or even torture and death if they don't comply, forces the person to either become alienated, or driven into fearful submission. Some however will go along quite willingly and happily if they lack knowledge or self esteem.

The god of the bible uses the later method.

Bluntly telling someone not to do something is an invitation to a curious human, which is the way we were created, to break the rules and find out for themselves what will happen.

The best way to learn is to make mistakes and humans make them all the time however the god of the bible does not allow us to take this natural route. The god of the bible does make some provisions for a person to repent if they do decide to be adventurous but in the face of threats, fear and unanswered questions, a sincere repentance is rather difficult.

This often results in residual guilt, and because of ambiguity over what is and isn't a transgression against God, the person may be left confused, fearful and uncertain about their future. God demands to be loved above all others but under these circumstances true love is hardly possible, especially given that he's conveniently invisible and unreachable. Strangely, most Christians are quite happy in their religion and don't have any problem living under this kind of bizarre regime.

The reward and punishment system that God uses has been shown to work sufficiently on animals and children but intelligent and creative human adults deserve better. If the god of the bible is who he says he is then he should know that.

Why doesn't he? Maybe it's because it isn't God at all who's doing this but man doing it to himself. Religion is provably man's invention and man makes his religion to be in proportion to his level of development. The Islamic culture for example is a little more barbaric than western cultures and that's obviously why the Islamic religion is also more barbaric.

Horses for courses, or rather courses for horses.

• Love is the desire and ability to make someone happy and joyful every minute of every day

• Love is unconditional acceptance of someone no matter what they choose to believe or do

• Love is promising someone something good and then surprising them with something ten times better the very next day

• The god of the bible ought to try using love some time instead of just bragging about it