Contending In Vain, Amid Confusion

APHORISMS ABOUT HUMAN STUPIDITY are numerous,famous, and often humorous. Einstein was great at it, and those attirbuted to him are authentic. He had a great sense of humor. "The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius is somewhat limited"...."Two things are infinite, stupidity, and the universe, and I'm not sure about the universe."...You've heard'em all... "Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain", is from ancient times. They all are, as famous maxims usually are, quite correct. Nobody will ever convince a devout Christian conservative super patriot, for instance, that these United States of America were not fouded upon "Christian values", but rather, upon eighteenth century enlightenment principles,politically scientific ideals, such as those of John Locke, espousing popular democratic republican, enlightened government. These concepts were quite revolutionary for their time, much dabated, much mistrusted, and they engendered apprehension for the future survival of the republic. Then too, it seems readily apparant that if indeed the republic were founded upon Christian values, it would have been born as a dictatorship, for the Christian religion is, if nothing else, a dictatorship of Almighty God. But consider that in dealing with devout conservative reborn Christians, one is confronted with someone who believes on faith alone that the universe was created by an anthropomorphic deity (the entire universe was created by a very human-like being) who created humans who resemble himself, allowed them to behave badly, so badly that they dared to become curious, then murdered his own son, who is actually himself, and decided that this tortorous, ritual death would atone for the mistakes of everybody forever, but only if they would worship him. God, however, gave himself a break. He brought himself back from the dead,and rewarded himself with a heavenly, eternal life,thereby missing out on only one weekend. One lost weekend, quite a sacrifice! If that isn't bloody barbarism compounded by blackmail and coercion, what is? If that isn't chsotic, inchoate, convoluted, a veritable cowweb of a narrative, what is? Of the roughly four thousand recognized organized religions in the world, all contain some truth and widsom, all contain some falsity and nonsense. They also contain wickedness and horror,, such as the invention of "hell". If the concept of hell isn't psychotic, what is? Arguably, anybody who truly believes in hell is mentally ill, vicious, or brainwashed. Both heaven and hell are here, on Earth, if anywhere. Of these primitive, barbaric religions, none will endure long into the future, quite likely. Einstein speculated that the religions of the future will be cosmopolitan, encompassing our modern knowledge of the universe, reflecting a twenty second or third century awarness of reality, rather than one which is thousands of years archaic. These old religions concocted paradigms in which the world is flat, resting upon the backs of enormous turtles, among many other nonsensical notions. One notion is that when God returns to Earth in human form as Christ, the stars will fall from the sky and smash upon the ground like fragile glass trinkets. Conservatism, religious and political, embraces tradition, resists change, self improvement, and progress,and refuses to abandon demonstrably outdated but cherished notions of reality. The religion of the future will be predicated upon science, and the wonderous, miraculous universe it reveals, rather than long held sacred superstitions. But, regrettably, we'll have to be patient, and, while facilitating continued evolution, political, scientific, and religious, through our own efforts, we'll have to wait a while longer...