[VOA]

I believe organized religion(s) to be the bane of human existence and the cause
of endless misery.

I would have made similar statement for...decades after I graduated from college.

But, as Churchill would say about democracy being the worst political system, except for
all the other systems that have been tried...my view now is that about the same thing
can be said about organized religion of the Judeo-Christian bent being the worst belief system...
except for all the other belief systems tried.

As the writer Chesterton said, when people stop believing in religion, it doesn't
mean they stop believing in anything. And the suggested books (below) shows the
bitter fruit of that approach.

The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression
by Stephane Courtois, Mark Kramer (Translator), Jonathan Murphy (Translator),
Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panne, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartosek, Jean-Louis Margolin

from the Editorial Review at amazon.com:
Communism did kill, Courtois and his fellow historians demonstrate, with ruthless efficiency:
25 million in Russia during the Bolshevik and Stalinist eras, perhaps 65 million in
China under the eyes of Mao Zedong, 2 million in Cambodia, millions more Africa,
Eastern Europe, and Latin America--an astonishingly high toll of victims.
This freely expressed penchant for homicide, Courtois maintains, was no accident,
but an integral trait of a philosophy, and a practical politics, that promised to
erase class distinctions by erasing classes and the living humans that populated them.


Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine by Jasper Becker

from the Editorial Review at amazaon.com:
Journalist Jasper Becker conducted hundreds of interviews and spent years
immersed in painstaking detective work to produce Hungry Ghosts, the first full
account of this dark chapter in Chinese history. In this horrific story of
state-sponsored terror, cannibalism, torture, and murder, China's communist
leadership boasted of record harvests and actually increased grain exports,
while refusing imports and international assistance. With China's reclamation of
Hong Kong now a fait accompli, removing the historical blinders is more timely than ever.
As reviewer Richard Bernstein wrote in the New York Times, "Mr. Becker's remarkable
book...strikes a heavy blow against willed ignorance of what took place."

[man of Yosemite]

Ghandi once said that he would have probably become a christian if he had never met one. His problem was that he never met Christ, never looked beyond the shortcomings of the followers of Christ to the Master himself. Christians are all imperfect followers of Christ, and our mission is to point people to Jesus himself. People who want to excuse themselves from this faith have never really seen the founder of it. They look for an excuse to remain were they are, unrepentant and rebellious toward God.