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“The best cure for Christianity is reading the Bible” SClemens

and fwiw nowhere does the Bible claim to be holy I guess

and, there are no male or female in the kingdom likely means that that last bit should be understood...differently; Deborah was a recognized authority, even a judge, def had authority over men, etc

I went to 12 years of Cat-lick School. I was the right age for Vatican II and actually read the bible, although with in a few years that was again discouraged. What made me give up on all religions, was history. Sadly I was sent to a RC High School that had all regions courses, then AP courses in senior year. (this was a novelty).

Once I started getting very intense history course starting with Ancient History, it was the final thing. It was very obvious to me it was all just so much story telling to clam the masses. The commies were right Religion IS the Opium of the People.

When times are tough or nearly impossible it offers hope. It does not help, it allows a more compliant death.

That said

One must also add that psychotropic drugs and Hemp are probably the sources for the belief systems we know so well. There is not a drug the ancients would have rejected, unless it was obvious poison.

See "Cannabis A Forgotten History", there are others as well. When you understand for the first time that corporations , religious assholes and a megalomaniac, coupled with Anti Mexican sentiment and their new best friend, William Randolf Hearst, basically conspired or colluded to make a super natural source of medicine/food/industrial and edible oil/paper and fiber products/feed stock for some plastics.

No Mr Hearst owned the trees, mills, pulp plants and news papers, Dow owned the process, plastic makers had a new product to sell (nylon) and they would not allow a bunch of farmers make money over their interests. Oh did I mention oil companies, who would suffer.

The reason you need to know about God and Drugs is simple. it reduces the validity of all claims when you know the people who started this thing we call religion was either stoned on weed, or tripping on fungus. It does not give one a moral high ground, it simple levels the thought process.

If religion were new, and you heard a preacher raving about his/her savior, testifying as it were, and then realized they were tripping their bums off on LSD or higher then Saturn on really nice Ganga, you might think a few times before you joined up. Most people would not take a true stoner seriously.

And I think like many here, once you understand it you never believe it.

I totally agree. I red the bible cover to cover and it definitely helped make me an atheist.

They could always say it “did not mean it like that” or something similar.

She strongly disagrees but it was bible study to the extreme that finally got me out of the Christian mire. Once you understand how those 66 books were put together and when it happened just go back in time to the Jesus era and you see how ridiculous it all is. Plus, believers are not followers of Jesus but followers of Paul who never even met Jesus.