Reform Thyself!!!

A note on religion on this day of papal election: Reform thyself!!
Here’s a brief shopping list for the odd fundamentalist to get to work on.

Out Right Lies

1. Faith Healing - great for making televangelists multi-millionaires but not so good for mending broken bones, cancer or regrowing brain tissue. This applies to all the fake new age healers as well under my blanket "No Numbskullduggery" doctrine.
   
2. The Miracle of Transsubstantiation - No Timmy, that wafer and wine are still just a wafer and wine after the priest blesses them.
   
3. Speaking in Tongues - Glossolalia is a fascinating transcultural phenomenon but is probably due more to a hyperfunctioning of the brains speech centers then anything supernatural. The mindless, repetitive sounds made by devout evangelicals across the planet, however, are more a function of our need to feel special and belong. It's spiritual wannabeism - pure and sim...sha...na...be...ba...no-ple.
   
4. The Rapture - If only God would remove his "devout" from the planet...
   
5. Circumcision - no parent in their right mind would require their child to mutilate their genitals just to prove they would obey. This is either man made or symptomatic of a "god" unworthy of anything other then contempt.
   
6. Exorcism - see psychology, infectious diseases, brain tumors and organic chemistry. Religion has us looking for monsters under the bed when they really exist under dura maters. In this and many other areas the Gnostics were dead on: It's probably that kind of practicality that got them all killed.

Mistaking Human Ideology For Divine Will

• When Pope John Paul the 2nd was dying a random cardinal exhorted the faithful to "Intensify their prayers". While touching, this is really the "Horton hears a who" argument in theosophic clothing. Is God deaf or just so busy elsewhere that he needs our devout wishes to clue him in - or cajole him to perform miracles? Too much of religion is the pounding of square pegs into rigid round holes. Instead, I propose seeking answers to questions in what God has unquestionably created (ie, nature, life, evolution, quantum dynamics, chemistry, geology, etc). Let's try going with the flow that God created instead of working against it. Let's spend more time listening then praying. That's all I'm asking for folks.