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| Pope Francis |
Pope
Francis kicked off the recent confusion by trying to encourage the homophobic Roman
Catholic Church to be more open to gays.
That caused an uproar, as did his casual suggestion that atheists could
find a welcome mat in heaven.
While
backtracking, he also announced continued papal support for evolution and the
Big Bang Theory, scientific-backed paradigms that undercut all Christian
thinking about creation of the universe and of mankind.
While
Francis was infuriating the troglodytes who comprise much of Roman Catholic
hierarchy, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints decided to come
clean on a portion of its sordid history.
After years of denial, Church elders recently released a report that
confirmed that its founder, Joseph Smith, did indeed have multiple wives.
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| Smith |
Rivaling
some Persian harems of bygone years, Smith enjoyed up to 40 wives. Some of the women were already married and
wrested from their husbands. One was 14
years old. Supposedly, that marriage and
some others were not consummated. Of course, the people saying that are the
same ones who for years denied such marriages ever took place. Now, they say, Smith had three revelations
and was threatened with death by an angel if he didn’t create the enormous harem.
Maybe
next, the Church will concede Smith initially reserved the right of plural marriage
to himself and had to open that door to other male Mormons only after they vociferously
protested. That could be in the second or
third announcement from the Church, which has promised such reports.
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| Wahhabi woman |
Other
religions, too, are reporting declines in membership, financial support and use
of facilities for ritualistic functions.
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| Ancient Roman temple |
All
of that is enough to make a deity scratch his/her head in bewilderment.
It’s
really not that puzzling. What we are
witnessing is a demise of our traditional religions. From an historical perspective, that’s to be
expected. The same thing happened 2,000
years ago and opened the door to Christianity.
Then, accepted pagan faiths that had sustained the Western world for millennia
were starting to fade away.
In
its place, came a religion which was, in the words of historians, “old wine in
new wineskin.”
The aging Roman and Greek faiths died away because they lacked any real meaning,
offering no guidance in the way of morals and ethics. Judaism and its rebellious offshoot, Christianity,
did.
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| Infallible Pius IX |
While
the faiths are collapsing now, their decay began some time ago. For
Roman Catholics, it can be dated to the 1869 announcement of papal
infallibility. Pius 1X was the pope then and was the first officially to claim that a pope can’t make a
mistake when dealing with doctrine, which gives Francis’ comments real
weight. Of course, Cardinals some 150
years ago had no idea someone with Francis’ freewheeling approach would ever
become pope.
Now,
his words, spoken by a man who cannot be in error, are eroding what’s left of a
belief shredded by historical research and scientific discoveries.
For
the Mormons, their faith started to fray first in 1890 when, in order for Utah to
become part of the United States, they abandoned bigamy. That’s when they began to cover up Smith’s
supposed revelations on the subject. Then,
in the 1970s, Mormon elders busily bought up and hid documents they thought
would bring ridicule on them. No one recognized
that the texts were forged; they were just afraid the contents could alienate
followers.
Now,
they have been forced to admit the embarrassing truth about their Prophet.
The
information-laden internet has helped undermine such faiths. So has the reality of science carefully
delineated in every classroom. Even a
simpleton can see the university contains no “heaven above us.” Hell has lost its meaning with the ridiculous
scenario that Christians are assigned to a Muslim hell and vice versa. And, everyone is going to a hell imagined by
the Zoroastrians who developed the idea long before Christianity existed.
The
realities of Ebola and other pan-epidemics, as well as the obvious randomness of
life’s experiences, have continued to poke holes in the claims about a god.
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| Prayer |
We
still say the prayers because, as one rabbi told me, “it’s traditional.” They are just not meaningful.
None
of this means religion will disappear.
Our existing theology will simply metamorphose into something else. As such, we should all be on the lookout for
a new prophet, who will spout acceptable tripe about God and heaven. It will sound fresh, attract followers and
create the new faith. This prophet will
likely sound revolutionary, but will actual fuse existing beliefs with some
novel twist. That's how it's done. For example, Christianity
is nothing more than the mixture of Greek paganism and Judaism.
Hundreds
of years from now, any humans surviving the coming storms will devoutly perform proscribed rituals on behalf of some new, “true”
faith, meanwhile laughing as they
recount our religious beliefs, as we do now when hearing the claims of ancient
religions,
Long-time
religious historian Bill Lazarus regularly writes about religion and religious
history. He also speaks at various
religious organizations throughout Florida.
You can reach him at www.williamplazarus.net. He is the author of the famed Unauthorized
Biography of Nostradamus; The Last Testament of Simon Peter; The Gospel Truth: Where Did the Gospel
Writers Get Their Information; Noel:
The Lore and Tradition of Christmas Carols; and Dummies Guide to Comparative
Religion. His books are available on Amazon.com,
Kindle, bookstores and via various publishers.
He can also be followed on Twitter.
You
can enroll in his on-line class, Comparative Religion for Dummies, at
http://www.udemy.com/comparative-religion-for-dummies/?promote=1
