Childrens Crusade Date Wednesday, April 24, 2024 - 02:36 PM PST Topic Religion OK, [insert generic 'I'm usually a lurker' statement here] I've been watching the whole religion topic come and go for a while, and every time I think it would be a good time to post this it suddenly looks like someone has thankfully managed to put the top back on the kettle. This time it looks like the whole thing has blown up and the worms are eating the cats who are buggering the monkeys...so here goes. I was born in a psycho-Xian commune, and I use the term with all due rancor. They called themselves the Shiloh commune. Perhaps you've heard of them? No? Let me rattle off a few statistics and drop a few names that may bring this into perspective. The Shiloh commune was founded in the early sixties with the mission of bringing together free thinkers and religiously minded hippies who wished to come together and share their love of the lord. Even to my particularly slanted mind this original concept sounds like a noble endeavor. I myself have often voiced similar ideas with the exception of the love of any 'lord' portion. The leader of this original enclave was a particularly charismatic man as is the norm in these situations and before long there was, in a small area carved out of the Oregon wilderness, a very tightly knit group of utter and complete psychotics. I'm going to jump ahead of the story somewhat for the sake of brevity. I grew up there, my closest friends were some of the other kids in the commune and one Mexican guy who did most of the maintenance work in the commune. He was not a part of the commune, more a 'little man from the village' who had ended up sucked into the ever growing madness. Shortly around my fourth birthday he died, he managed to eat a couple thousand volts while installing some insulation in someone's attic. I was allowed to go to the funeral, and I remember asking if I would get to see the man I considered my second (and preferred) daddy in heaven. I was told no, he was not the right sort of person... I think at that point I started looking at my surroundings with a slightly wary eye. Skip ahead again. When I was six, my parents began to get the feeling that something was going horribly wrong with the commune. Even their horribly brainwashed radar was beginning to pick up the blips on the "Something is fucked up" screen. They took me and my two younger brothers and moved to California. There they wasted no time in finding a sub-urban version of another version of Xianity to join up with. They called themselves "Four Square Christians" I called them terror mongers. At that point I was reading voraciously and had learned the term in a cheesy vampire novel about a Jewish vampire who had survived the camps in Germany only to be turned when he finally escaped. Let me take a brief break from the biographical information and return to Shiloh for a second. One of my other friends in Shiloh was more than likely River Phoenix, name sound familiar? Really cute 80's actor, Little Nikita, My Own Private Idaho, other great movies that we've all forgotten. Anyway, when he offed himself I had hopes for a media blitz, I wanted the information I had up till then only suspected to escape. I was 18 when it happened and had been rifling through my Dad's old correspondence with the so called 'Elders' of the old commune. Apparently they still existed. Still do today too. They own a chain of motels throughout the Pacific Northwest by the same name, and have a few retreats still in action. Anyway, the letters my dad had been receiving were a combination of discussing his activities as one of the ministers in the commune and asking about the health of his children. Apparently we, the children of Shiloh, were dropping like flies. we had a suicide rate that was nearly three times that of the national average. Back then I had tried to off myself three or four times. Today I have a lot more to live for and am enjoying myself to much to quit, but my youngest brother is a recovering heroin addict and my other brother is a vapid minded wiped Xian who thinks joining the armed forces will give his life direction. He did so much pot in his teens trying to escape the memories I doubt a crossing guard could give him direction today. Whiplash back to California. My parents joined a new cult of Xians, they preached fire and brimstone and taught the Sunday school where I was sent for the first year that we would all die and burn in hell if we didn't spend every moment of every day praying or standing very very still. Shortly after I started asking questions that were too complex for the brainwashed mannequin who was indoctrinating us ("If I commit suicide by leaping out of an airplane but repent before I hit the ground will I go to heaven?") I was asked to go to adult church where people listened in rapt terror to a man who was too smart to take questions in front of the congregation. He went on and on in roughly the same line as our Sunday school leacher, except he slipped a running vein of hatred into his sermons. If the mysterious "They" were at all different from us, i.e. not in church with us at the moment, they should be summarily stoned to death in the most public place available. However, because we lived in a land ruled by the laws of the sinful and debauched, we should bide our time. He told us all about the end of the world and how then we would take our vengeance on those who would flaunt their satanic inclination (Again, anyone who wasn't in the church RIGHT THEN). He also voiced many opinions on how we could take out our frustrations on those heathens in the here and now in more subtle ways...namely "your children won't do anything truly bad, but make sure they know just how bad those non Xian children they go to school with are." and other children's crusade rhetoric. Again, for the sake of brevity, let's just say I developed a brain of my own and began to do some research. I learned about the subtle bloodbath that Shiloh was becoming, i learned that no matter which church I went to they toed the same rough line, and I learned that they and only they were the true children of christ. I also learned what the crusades were, and the Salem Witch Trials, and the thousand and one other atrocities that had been committed in the name of "bringing the word of christ" to the heathens. Shortly after that I learned that for every atrocity that had been committed by the christians, at least one other had been committed by another group who followed another 'savior' some of whom preached "love" as the christians professed to, others of whom were all out hate mongers but just as convinced of their righteousness. I learned that there were religions out there such as Buddhism which both preached love and were less guilty of bloodshed in the name of their religion, but I'm afraid to dig too deep because I like Buddhism and would like to hold out hope that humans can follow at least one herd without attempting to slaughter all the other sheep in the pen. To give a brief point to this ramble let me ask this, if ninety-nine percent of what Xians and other organized religions do is not about their faith, how am I supposed to recognize the remaining one percent that is supposed to shine through and prove to me that they are right? If any of these religions are correct and have any right, except that of free speech, to exist in the same breathing space as myself, why am I, the non religious person, the only one not killing everyone who is not wearing the same color boxers on their head as I am? Why is it that the majority of folks who have two brain cells to rub together, and have proven it by doing something redeeming, have opted out of the religion game? I include the vast majority of theologians in this question, all of those to whom I have spoken have stated that they are without a doubt through with identifying with any organized religious movement. That doesn't mean they don't still hold out hope, belief, and/or faith in some divine being or beings, but they truly believe, after years of searching and researching the religions of the world, that all these folks have their heads wedged firmly up their asses. Why does so much hate come from people who talk about love so much? Why does so much death come from people that spend so much time talking about everlasting life? Why? This article comes from Shmeng http://www.shmeng.com/ The URL for this story is: http://www.shmeng.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=266