Please: Don’t Give Me Those Old-Time Religions!

By Ed Raymond
Staff Writer  
I have sung that song “Old Time Religion” a few times in my life: “Gimme that old time religion, It’s good enough for me. It was good for the Hebrew children. It was good for dad and mother. It will do when I am dyin’. It’s good enough for me.” No more for me, even if it’s been sung in quite a number of old Western movies, adding gravitas to the black and white hats. The seven “great” religions of the world have made such a helluva mess of this world they have convinced sane people to add an eighth. So add Atheism to Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Shintoism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.

In this age when “fallen-away” Catholics outnumber practicing Catholics in the United States and Europe, Atheism is exploding.  An article in the Aug. 1 issue of USA Today explores the idea that morality without faith might be the best option of all. University of Chicago Professor Jerry Coyne outlines the increase in Atheism in his article “As Atheists Know, You Can Be Good Without God.” He does this while the members of other religions are killing each other with suicide vests, bombs, bullets, and thousand-year wars.

Daily prayer to higher authorities does not seem to be an answer. One talkshow host recently offered this gem: “Every day I offer up a special prayer for the entire Kardashian family, but the next morning they’re always still alive.” We seem to have a God who can’t make up his mind. Just in the last year or so He has told Michele Bachmann, Tim “Toolittle” Pawlenty, Sarah Palin, and Newt Gingrich that they are His choice for president of the United States. Maybe He has Heavenly Alzheimer’s.

The Muslims and the Christians both claim Noah, Moses, and all those other old guys as charter members of their faiths, but these two factions or cults have been killing each on a wholesale level for about 1400 years. (I will leave the other five great religions for another day. Some of them have been killing each other for thousands of years.)

Believe It Or Not, There Was An Islamic Golden Age!

Historians tell us there was an Islamic Golden Age spanning about 2000 years (750 B.C. to 1258 A.D.). Islamic governments inherited knowledge and skills from Greece and Persia and had Mecca as one of the great trading centers of the world. Muslim art, particularly in ceramics, glass, and illuminated manuscripts,  was the envy of the world until about the 16th Century. Islamic scholars studied the works of Aristotle and saved them for the rest of us. Arab philosophy reigned supreme in the intellectual world and was translated into Hebrew and Latin. Muslim mathematicians and scientists developed algebra, trigonometry, and advances in optics and astronomy. Muslim physicians and scholars led the world in medical literature and the practice of medicine. They developed the world’s greatest library at Alexandria.

Christians absorbed the remnants of the Roman Empire. We all know that history. But for a thousand years Europe was known for external and internal fighting and political anarchy. To cut this whole thing short, then we had the various religious crusades between Muslims of Muhammad and English and French kings looking for gold, silver, and precious stones. The crusades were more economic than religious. And here is when both Muslims and Christians started to treat women as slaves, servants, and second class citizens. This continues to be a great problem for both today.

Roman Catholic leaders only take advice from half of those who hold up the church roof. Nuns and women dedicate their lives to Christ and make meals, clean the toilets, nurse the sick, teach the uneducated, and can even give communion because of the shortage of priests. But they cannot become priests in the pulpit even if they once gave birth to them. They could add commonsense and unique experiences to the testosterone-laden bishops, cardinals, and popes who make gender decisions about which they know nothing.

The Bible And The Koran

I have not read an entire Bible but I have spent some time grazing in a few of the 170 versions. I have a hard time believing that someone has read them all and made comparisons of languages and translations. According to Google the Koran has two, perhaps three, different versions and has been translated into hundreds of languages and dialects. I have read only a few sections of the Koran, mostly sections that are controversial about punishment and salvation. In these areas the Bible and the Koran have many similarities. The Old Testament lists punishments such as stoning, hanging, and amputations.The Koran does the same. Both “sacred” documents show disrespect and the utmost disdain for women.

The Koran is more specific about the treatment of women but the Bible contains many of the same commandments:

:: Men are in charge of women and are the leader of the family.

:: Men who commit “indecencies” with one another are not punished if they repent and mend their ways. If women commit the same “indecencies,” they are stoned to death. Stoning is one of the favorite punishments for “illicit” sex in Muslim countries.

:: Women cannot pray or worship in the same room as men. Most mosques have basements the women can use. If not, they may pray behind a wall in the prayer room.

:: For women any sort of sexual exploration is punishable by death. Men are pardoned by an “all-merciful” Allah.

** Women will receive the lesser share of any inheritance.

:: Women can be divorced by the use of simple statements but cannot divorce. If the husband dies the wife must wait four months and ten days before remarrying. If divorced, she must wait for three menstrual periods before remarrying. She can have only one husband but a man can have four wives.

:: A woman must stay secluded within the house and remain covered. If she goes out of the house she must be accompanied by a close relative.

:: A woman cannot buy a cellphone or have a landline unless she has a male guardian’s permission.

And there are hundreds more dictums and rules, including the restriction on driving cars! They can drive camels. Because Eve listened to the snake in Paradise, Muslim women suffer 18 different pains. Among them: pregnancy, childbirth, and menstruation. The Great Prophet Mohammad also said that the majority of Muslims who entered Hell would be women.

The Perils Of Being A Muslim Female

There are hideous chapters added by the international press every day about the perils of being a Muslim female. A few of many horror stories:

:: A 42-year-old Saudi woman who has become a surgeon despite many obstacles remains single although she has received many marriage proposals from eligible men. Her father refuses to give permission so he can continue to deposit her salary check into his bank account.

:: Tribal leaders in Pakistan forced a Muslim mother to give her teenage daughter to ten men as payment for a 16-year-old poker debt.

:: The highest court in the Arab Emirates ruled that a man can beat his wife as long as he leaves no permanent marks. He cannot break any bones.

:: Several Muslim women in Somalia were flogged and jailed for selling tea because it brought them into close contact with men.

:: The Afghanistan Taliban recently widely advertised a public stoning which killed two young people for committing adultery.

The Perils Of Being A Christian Female

If you were beginning to believe that only Muslims committed crimes against women,  these incidents will bring you out of your fantasy:
:: The Obama administration just announced new regulations that require insurers to provide contraceptives and other birth control devices to women without charging co-pays. According to the largest Christian church in the U.S., the Roman Catholic Church, any form of contraception is immoral. Catholics can play Vatican Roulette without being excommunicated for using contraceptives. The Vatican Taliban calls this gamble “fertility awareness” which is officially called Natural Family Planning by the sex experts in Rome.

But if the couple uses any type of zone defense to keep those millions of sperm racing from a Viagra-laced male from scoring a touchdown in the egg, then they may face the wrath of the keeper of the universal chastity belt. So the use of any contraceptive is immoral. If both the woman and the man know the woman is not fertile and they enjoy sexual intercourse, isn’t that natural action immoral? Isn’t avoiding the woman’s fertility period also a form of contraception if you know pregnancy is not possible? Inquiring minds want to know. After all, Catholics don’t want to commit such a grave sin and then be punished by excommunication from the only church that can keep them out of Hell forever. It is comforting to know that the tired old men of the Vatican have lost this argument with American women in the biggest landslide in history. Ninety-eight percent of Catholic women have admitted they have used contraceptives.

:: We have another branch of the American Taliban that offers a religious death at the fangs of poisonous snakes. Unique to Southern states and several Canadian provinces, snake-handling Pentecostals base their worship on Luke 19: “Behold, I give unto to you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” To paraphrase a Biblical line: Let those without sin kiss the first snake–or something like that. Some have—and some have died. Pentecostals also speak in tongues, claim miracles, and sometimes consume poisons other than those provided by snakes.

:: Then we have the god of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Warren Jeffs who believes he is God‘s gift to women—like the Greek god Zeus. Zeus came down to earth and raped human females whenever he felt urges—which was quite often. Jeffs is a serial child sexual abuser who has had many “spiritual marriages” with girls barely into their teens. Those “spiritual marriages” have made many of them pregnant. If there is anyone lower than a Pentecostal snake it is the child sexual abuser Jeffs. He is lower than a Taliban chief growing poppies who marries six-year-old girls. At least as a practicing Muslim fundamentalist he is limited to four wives. Jeffs is reputed to have over 50 “spiritual”  wives, and he even samples the brides of his fellow Mormons. It would be nice to say “Only in America” but it wouldn’t be true.

Failed Organizations and Nations

After an examination of progress in the civilized world, we can conclude that organizations and nations that oppress women are failures. What have the nations of Islam accomplished in the 700 years of Mohammad other than correctly endorsing Western oil checks? They have built the tallest building in the world with our oil money and created revolutions in the Middle East. Big deal. Ireland has, more or less, told the Vatican Boy’s Club to get out of the country by sundown because of decades of sexual, physical, and mental abuse committed by priests and nuns in the schools for the poor under their charge. The Catholic Church is imploding around the world because of Inquisition rules.

Hopefully thousands of robotic women will be freed to join the 21st Century when their god Warren Jeffs is put away for his sex crimes. T.S. Eliot describes these leaders perfectly in his poem The Hollow Men: “We are the hollow men/ We are the stuffed men/ Leaning together/ Headpiece filled with straw.”

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