2002 James Bauhaus

PLAGUE OF RELIGIONS

Today is 9-11-02, a year after the successful Arab counterattack on their worst oppressors; the pentagon and the twin towers of moneychangers. I'm watching America, in the form of a flag-draped bald eagle, fly ass-first into the future. I'm watching Americans put such an inane positive spin on things that they are blinded to the ship of state having been hijacked by corporate thieves and steered into the Charbidis of never-ending guerilla war and the Scylla of ever worse poverty and fear. After witnessing 50 years of history proceed from good to worse, this decade has plummeted faster from bad to worse than any other. Let's recount some of what all this positive thinking has gotten us:

In the popularity contest between the liar and the buffoon for president we got the greater of two evils this time, and it shows. It's ironic that they were able to steal the election and this country by falsely branding legitimate voters as felons. If our judicial system worked on the hereditary-rich classes, Bush, Cheney and company would themselves be serving lengthy sentences for mass theft, embezzlement, fraud and war crimes.

Twenty years after the last presidential megatheft (Reagan's savings and loan "deregulation", stock market manipulation and HUD scandal) the current megathefts began to explode due to concealed debt reaching critical mass (Haliburton, Harken, Xerox, Global Crossing, Amtrak, Worldcom, Enclone, Arthur Anderson, Enron, etc.) Sixty-eight percent of all our federal politicians were found to be on the Enron payroll, yet not a single one of them has the slightest chance of going to prison for it. They're nothing but richer for helping gangrape investors, taxpayers and California with fraud, pension theft and deregulatory rolling blackouts using sleazy new legal technology to lie-up energy prices sky-high. (These legal rape inventions worked similarly to Reagan's landflip schemes and technically were outlawed 20 years ago; fat lot of good law does when the rich simply ignore law without any possibility of ever getting punished for itl)

The politician's media pump out footage of these gov't thieves piously pounding the lectern in mock outrage over the thievery of their mere corporate brethren.. We, the sheeple, mimic the govcrats, apparently unable to grasp the fact that the only difference between govcrooke and bizcrooks is who happens to enjoy gov't employment at the time.

Having learned Hitler's lesson well, the gov/biz alliance steadily and expertly exploits our fear and ignorance by shifting our attention away from our own rape by them to their rape of other countries. Professional crooks have had us shivering in terror under our desks for decades by shrieking their war-word non-stop. (Atomic war, cold war, drug war, crime war, terror war, etc.) war is terror, and they'll be getting richer and more powerful off their war word for decades to come due to their secret, undeclared war on American citizens who don't inhabit the privileged classes: That's the top 1% controlling the bottom 99%. Myself, I'm a little tired of the cauldron calling the teacup black. They keep the ignorant crowing in unison as the slavemasters beat a rhythm of patriotism and prayer. They're such brazen scoundrels that they can't make us salute them, so they abracadabra the appearance of sancity in a flag and force us as kids-on to salute it! They use religion the same way, and we believe they believe in it simply because they can consistently produce a facade of piousness. Fact is, though, if God existed He'd be so outraged at the blasphemy His name is used for that He'd make certain the politicians' threats erupted brimstone at every lie.

Without the opium of patriotism and religion, would the sheeple suddenly become erect and realize that the gluttons of privilege are eating us alive? Is the stupor of ignorance so thick upon us that, even relieved of patriotism end religion, we'd still not find the energy to fix this world? Cruel as it is to let crooks steal this, our one and only world, from us by promising us a Heavenly existence after death on n nonexistent world, we should ask hard questions about religion, such as: Do any Gods exist?

No. The concept of God arose from the collision of consciousness, luck, ignorance and cunning (see: Scientific American issues 9-98 and 1-00). Long before the migration of man's ancestors and cousins out of Africa we were just another link in the food chain that led to the top predators such as cats, canines, bears and snakes, etc. We succeeded, in part, by forming more extensive social groups than just families, as was the case with most other successful animals. Speech evolved from mere shrieks and growls that indicated danger or opportunity. Speech and consciousness evolved in tandem, increasing in power and complexity with each generation as men excelled at learning and prospered as those deficient at it died off.

Working our way up to the topmost carnivore position, our hunters exterminated, ate end wore most of our competitors until now only the puniest remnants still survive in isolated pockets. Some of us died getting there and we stood over their corpses crying and wailing and asking "Why?!" We didn't know why our family members or friends got gored and we didn't , or why a lucky throw that should have missed somehow saved us from starving. We couldn't deduce why plants gave us food or why we had to take it from animals. We worried about our own impending death and sought desperately for a way to avoid it forever. Nobody was answering these questions, and the prosperity of full bellies left a lot of time to cower in dark holes and think while intensely listening for danger until the sun returned with our courage.

After each night wondering if we would eat or get eaten, the sun looked pretty good. We don't have much defense against carnivores that kill at night, like leopards and snakes, so darkness was particularly terrifying as it shut off our vision. Our ears tried to penetrate where our eyes couldn't. Every unexpected creak of branch and rustle of leaves brought new terror as our eyes tried to see what our ears told us was just beyond the inky jungle shadows. Half of us are 20% smaller than the other half; legs muscular and range over a smaller area. Thus women have more reason to be fearful and have less experience of what is worthy of fear. Men learned to mimic animal sounds to trick them into coming within range of assault. Desiring favors from women, the more clever of men used this knowledge to frighten both women and competing males and to make them grateful for our courage and strength. A band of men in broad daylight flailing with sticks is plenty to make the biggest bears and cats move off to find easier prey. Pythons, though, have infrared pits that let them see body heat in the dark. Leopards and lions can see through the dark better than we can too. Also, canines and felines often hunt in packs too. Smart men moved out of the trees and into caves that could be cleared of danger and were more easily defended. We learned to avoid nasty suprises by throwing our supper bones outside the cave as we emerged at dawn to hunt again. At night we could hear the predators snarling and crunching on our leavings. The more cunning of us did not use our superior knowledge to soothe the more frightened of us. Instead, we manipulated to our advantage by creating ghosts and misconceptions out of mere ignorance and inexperience.

The first of these short-term thinking, too-clever men drew power from others' fear by learning to project fear itself. They saw that even the mighty lion would run with the timid deer if the bushes suddenly thrashed noisily in an elephantine way. They learned how they could cow their fellow hunters simply by being last in line and surreptitiously flinging a rock to noisily crash into the thicket ahead. They learned how they could elicit "respect" and "earn" favors from women, children and other hunters by briefly charging out into the night a few yards and screaming, thereby frightening off the scavengers before rushing back inside to safety. Sneaky, cunning, manipulative people like these became the first witch doctors. They created within the minds of the timid and gullible a pantheon of evil and benevolent spirits to fit each situation as it arose. The evil cat spirit didn't drag off anyone from this clan last night because Ugh frightened it away. Ann is especially sacred to the berry spirit because she has the gift of being able to sniff them out when no others can. Old Rog can find water when the water spirits retreat deep inside the earth. Art can draw diagrams in the dust that tell us which way and how far to get what we need. Clive had a dream last night of how to use rock to carve a very long fang out of an antler. Portia was visited by the leaf spirit and shown how to fold together a basket. Rob was given a wonderful stone-tipped throwing stick by the deer Gods. The pig-clan lost a hunter and his newest invention when he was undoubtedly snatched away by an evil forest sprite.

The rise of witchdoctors was paralleled by the rise of God technology. If you were male, adult, and didn't have a skill, friend or a God to protect you, you were eaten or cast out when times got tough. This is why man moved north. Even the easy pickings of Africa can support only so many fruit-snatching opportunists. Back then nobody farmed, and there were 4 to 13 different branches of hominid competing with each other. During each of several known migrations out of Africa, each went north to gradually push excess population into the cold of real winter. Hardship and need forces invention and sophistication. Dry forests caught fire, and fire was found to be useful in providing warmth. Then it was found that dry smoke preserved food from spoilage. People who didn't eat raw meat somehow lived longer and healthier than those who did. People who lived by rivers always had water to drink. Those who threw their rinds in the river had melons grow nearby, as if by magic. To this day many a hunter leaves his spoor deep in the woods as a patch of "wild" (McDonald) tomato plants. Pithy sayings such as "you are what you eat" grew out of ignorance as a way to take credit for this phenomenon. We did not know why our favorite plants grew thicker around us the longer we lived in sunny, wet places, but we built myths to explain that we pleased the Gods when we spilled seeds, threw our trash in certain places and covered our droppings. Social groups who met in good will shared this technology and dispersed. Knowing man's nature toward "business", men of cunning sought out the inventive and the clever of each visiting clan and strove to obtain from them technologies that could be put to personal advantage without returning anything of comparable value. This is the age-old secret of business: buy low, sell high.

People who are merely clever are inventors, cogitators and scientists. Persona of true animal cunning evolved from witchdoctors, magicians and high-priests to become businessmen, lawyers and politicians. The cult of shamans built convincing myths around useful knowledge to make it appear that they understood how it worked. They learned that swamps made people sicken and die without knowing that mosquitos were the cause. They deduced that sickness spread via contact with sick people without knowing that gems were the problem. They figured out that pigs were even more prone to passing on parasitic worms than sheep, goats and cattle, but didn't know the precise origin of the sickness. From these glimmerings of knowledge and information on the differences between healthy enclaves and dying clans they created mythologies and lore that "explained" it. Thus we learned that demons inhabited swamps, quarantine worked against sick people, stagnant water shouldn't be drunk, defecating in the river was bad for people living downstream, and "cloven-hoofed" animals shouldn't be eaten.

The cultures that were beet at sorting through the cacophony of myth and lore to find what really worked were the cultures that prospered. Societies that chose to believe dangerous nonsense perished or suffered grievous misfortune, Where dangerous nonsense persists in a culture there is a mason for it that depends on science, not demons. Mostly, dangerous nonsense quickly dies out or never spreads far in the first place. Innocuous nonsense spreads rapidly when it is wrapped around useful information or technology. This is why the sacrifice of animals is seldom performed except in preparation of a feast: the Gods are not appeased by wasting food, plus it angers the poor, but festivals perform social functions that promote the exchange of information, technology, alliances and goodwill. Dangerous nonsense such as witchcraft, voodoo and cannibalism are only practiced by isolated groups who have no access to better, more functional belief systems. Were it not for the invention of writing and the continuous production of ignorant children seeking power, sorcery would have died out centuries ago. Fool-seeking authors keep the nonsense alive by re-inventing the mythology of it every few years. Taking advantage of the ignorant is a full-time occupation of most adults, especially since there is a new crop of about 85 million potential suckers born every year. We spend half or more of our short lives trying to sort the nonsense from the useful. It is a waste beyond colossal that we perpetrate proven nonsense despite having the technology and science to dispel it and keep it from returning to waste yet more of our time and resources.

Technology and science have proceeded in a direct route toward ever more and faster success despite any myth, ritual or demon it had to tow along with it. Fire bums, but it also kills parasites, preserves food, cauterises infected wounds and keeps us from freezing to death each winter. Thousands of different languages of grunts, clicks and eeks coalesced from the babble to form the only 20 or so main tongues spoken today. The sane condensing occurred with number systems and scripts. That which didn't work well enough fell into disuse as something that worked better took its place. Mythologies that didn't spread advantage well enough fell to those that did. Now misbegotten mythologies have to be preserved from extinction long enough for anthropologists to record and study them so we can learn what advantage they once conveyed that allowed them to persist as long as they have. Now every myth system is crumbling into the abyss of extinction, including the last 5 primary religions that subsumed or replaced all the others. Anthropologists are well on our way to uncovering the main advantages each conferred upon its adherents. Buddhism, the philosophy followed by the largest population of the world and also the most crowded, teaches how to best endure crowding and make the best of scant resources as well as how to be happy with less. This is why most Asians are small, well-spoken, cooperative and peaceful. They learned long ago that strife, destruction and mass-killing is not beneficial to anyone in the long run. Christianity took over from the Romans and thus exported its winning ways through conquest of weaker, more backward and less organized confederations of cities. Islam arose from under the heel of Christianity when its weight began to slacken due to decadence. Contention between the two enlivened one and revived the other. Islam expanded East and south; Christianity set roots in the new world. Both prospered by taking resources from elsewhere and by not wasting too much effort on each other. The Hindu prospered by a means similar to Buddhism, plus they were protected by water and easily defended mountains. Judaism the least-followed of the major religions, survives as the forerunner of Christianity and is largely protected by it for this reason. Major advantages conferred upon followers of Judaism include a large investment in their children, superior cultural and familial organization, great use of higher education, superb business sense, a universal realisation that membership in gov't or the merchant class is much preferable to merely working for a wage and the ability to most efficiently build and use fortunes to create economic advantage for themselves. Their ability to take advantage of gov't, business end professional appendages of society makes them both the most successful and most persecuted of religious practicioners. People envy too much success.

Every successful religion contains at least these tenants as their foundation: They sell a version of Big-Rock-Candy-Mountain to obtain converts. Paradise, Heaven, reincarnation, nirvana, valhalla and Elysium are examples of the carrot used to entice useful behaviors. Each has a version of Hell to bludgeon recalcitrant members into accepting rules and dominion. Each teaches a set of moral, ethical and spiritual standards that make society less violent, less contentious, more cooperative and healthier. Predation is limited to outsiders and minimised among believers. Each has as a goal the conversion of outsiders and tolerance of well-behaved neighbors. Each has an hierarchical structure, and those at the top feel free to change the dogma any way they need to in order to benefit themselves or the "greater good" despite any previous God's law. Considerable effort is made to force the new dogma and old dogma to agree, and in this way religion evolves to meet new circumstances without appearing to change. One of the more ridiculous extremes that this was put to involved the pope agreeing, centuries too late, that the earth is not the center of the solar system.

Religions used to be a force to effect rapid change and the adoption and spread of new and useful technologies. They got bogged down in Gods and mythology as man became more sophisticated and required better explanations for making sense of the how and the why of the universe and world. Gods and demons became more ridiculous as man lost his fear and learned that everything apparently follows logical, consistent physical laws that have nothing to do with supreme beings never in evidence. Religion recently turned into a force to prevent change, which is why we suffered the dark ages from 500 through 1500 AD. Centuries of warfare and destruction fought off science and reason, causing death and pestilence in what was formerly the most technologically enlightened areas of the globe. Dogma and mythology won, and the losers died, suffered unspeakable tortures and/or chose to publicly worship the local God and keep science end reason well concealed.

That which works is not easily stamped out, and in the past 500 years science and logic went its own way and prospered. Religion has continued to oppose modernity and to insist it has all the answers. At least 30% of everyone on this planet fervently believes most or all of a particular religion. Harder to guage is the percentage of people who merely feign belief as a means of avoiding strife. As many as 95% of everyone believes some parts of religion and it is thus very dangerous to profess atheism. To do so is to invite attack, censure, injury, even death. Despite this, 2% of the world's population has publicly abandoned all need of Gods. Even harder to guage is the percentage of persons who feign belief in order to use religion as a tool to manipulate others. Undoubtedly this percentage is quite large owing to man's exploitative nature; the very thing religion evolved to correct. Obviously religion is primarily enervated by the ignorant sincerely wishing to reap its afterworld rewards and by they who use it as a tool to exploit people here in reality. Telling the two groups apart is virtually impossible, but a moderately effective technique is to assume that they who pile up worldly goods are less devout than the poor. Of these charlatans are sects that put out the false notion that science is against religion and that scientists are demons actively enticing people into perdition. Fact is, science and scientists could not care less about the blustering of religionists except to pity their victims. These ferocious debates are nothing but religionists creating contention out of nothing so as to attract donations or achieve personal followings or entrance into Heaven. There is exactly zero evidence of any God's existence. Everything about them must be taken exclusively on faith. The mythology surrounding God is ridiculously inconsistent in many places, requiring belief in several opposite, mutually exclusive notions simultaneously. Educated persons as young as age 12 have often deduced the barely concealed true function of religions and commented on the fact that God and mythology are no longer necessary to force compliance of obvious good-sense social rules. In a prosperous, well educated modem society in which wealth is distributed evenly and properly, God has outlived his usefulness and become a hindrance to further progress. Religion has been hijacked by rich grafters who use it to further their own dynasties at the expense of education and the common good of man. Also it is being used to prevent progress in genetics, cloning, population stabilization and immorality. Hence this essay and my pitiful attempt to save the future from shortsighted persons who would drive us to extinction with their greed, ignorance and maliciousness.

So: What am the benefits of religion?

The primary benefit of religion is its charitable contributions to the victims of physical, gov'tal or natural disasters and misfortunes. Physical misfortune means everything from disease, genetic defects and industrial accidents to everything in between. Gov'tal disasters means everything from prison to war to massive economic and environmental theft end degradation as is happening today. Modern religion has tradition ally cared for and drawn members from persons victimised by birth, gov't or "acts of God". The rich and the ruling elite have traditionally been glad to have religion clean up after their greed, corruption and malice. Religion provides for children, giving them a religious education and other support, and women more than men who are able-bodied yet suffering from the same types of mental and economic anguish. All this for just conversion to the faith and no more than 10% of one's yearly income. Religion is a tremendous bargain compared to gov't's version of the same services. Gov'ts require overall a minimum tax rate of 40%.

Another product of religion is the easing of mental anguish through the sale of hope where no hope or very little hope exists. Persons dying of fatal wasting diseases such as TB prior to modern therapies or HIV today have no hope of survival. Though it is unknown how much good is done by giving false hope to persons in terminal, painful situations, it is a fact that false hope prevents the alleviation of pain and anguish through suicide of prisoners and invalids. There is evidence that many such victims : of misfortune realise that they're being lied to by religionists and still choose to continue living, if only to comfort the religionist and live up to his expectations. Also there is the factor of gov'tal hysteria against pain relieving drugs that forces people to endure and suffer more pain for longer periods for completely unnecessary reasons. (There is no reason to care that a dying person may acquire what drugcops call "addiction" before dying.) Religious ministrations appear to help lessen pain caused by such misbegotten gov'tal policies and may cause persons to eschew suicide too.

One of the main benefits of religion I see is that it functions to somewhat limit the mass-murder and global destruction gov'ts periodically force citizens and outsiders to perpetrate and suffer. Since gov'ts are universally without conscious and, if were actual persons, would be branded insane in many cases and rabid in some, it is very fortunate for us to have a rag of religion fluttering about on the collar of gov'tal wolverines to slightly distract them as they ransack this planet and rape and kill all its life forms. Religion keeps lawyers from becoming too vicious by researching moral dilemmas. Recently prosecutors tried to connive a jury into nailing a guy who drove a drunk friend from the police station to where police left his car. He then wiped out a family of four. Prosecutors could not make the jurors forget that the police were more guilty than the drunk's friend because they let the drunk go first and didn't take his car at arrest, as is policy. The jurors were not tricked into this despite the fact that police gave this privileged character special treatment by not taking his car, letting him make a high-speed signature bond, letting him use the cop's phone to call his friend and knowing he was intent on retrieving his car. This continual quest for more power for the already too-powerful is evident in horrid detail as I write. BushII and company are this minute duping American citizens into an obviously disastrous war on Iraq that will undoubtedly cause decades of guerrilla warfare to come straight here from the mideast and stay here. Stealing millions and the election was not enough. He wants to perpetrate global sneak attack war just so he can create a police state and jack up oil and munitions prices even more and become even more superrich before he is finally ousted and lives safe in his castle watching the firestorm he caused. All govt's are like Bushco to some extent, and the only thing that keeps them from eating even more of our babies is the Church and their need to be seen in it to grease more quickly into the seats of power. Since they have to feign belief in God and weasel around his moral tenants like "don't kill, lie, steal, fornicate, etc", politicians' predations are somewhat less and of shorter duration than they would otherwise be.

How much human resource is lost to perpetuating these frauds? What is the actual cost of religion?

Though any assessment of the cost of religion is bound to be more subjective than objective, the answer is that prodigious amounts of human and other resources are wasted in the practice of religion. A minimum of 30% of the entire world's population regularly practice religious rituals. This alone translates into about 100 billion manhours/ year down the hole assuming that 1 hour/week/person of useless ritual is performed annually. The same amount of time used profitably in public works instead of venerating a myth could teach critical thinking to millions of children, making them less susceptible to victimization by politicians, lawyers, merchants, even peers.

Teaching useless mythologies is also a tragic waste when it doesn't even involve a moral parable as the lesson. Also, selling a fabled reward and false hope probably makes most people more apathetic and lazy in this world as they merely coast out to the "next" world. Worse, people who buy into the myth that gaining converts now reaps paradise after death spread the affliction of religion, causing ever greater loss of productivity is useful areas. For example, as people age, we fear death more. There are thousands, if not millions of people who are frantically trying to make up for misspent youth by grasping for converts as a way to claw their way from Hell to Heaven.

A common way this occurs is through the thousands of bible study courses offered to prisoners. Three that I know of consist of an extremely old businessman and two similarly aged women, all unconnected with each other. They put out ads in publications that find their way into prisons and death row cages. They mine these loneliest and most desperate people, offering "pen-pals" and rendering only bible study. They jot out hundreds of short letters per month that cause hundreds of captives to frantically flip through and read thousands of bible passages in a desperate search for that which does not exist within the bible, specifically, a means of avoiding Hell, gaining Heaven, saving one's soul, freedom from captivity, etc. Spiritual relief from mental torture is a commodity highly touted by the purveyors of religion, but in 30 years of watching captives partake, very few escape torment this way. The cycle is that they cared no more for God than education when free. Worse, they often preyed upon the religious prior to their abduction and encagement by the gov't. From the cage their supposedly cunning minds often try to use religion to connive their way out. Some sincerely spend much effort praying and reading dogma and find friends who are also frantically searching for the freedom they are callously told exists within religion and its rituals. Over the years they find that freedom is not what religion can deliver, plus many become preyed upon for being seen as weak for their beliefs. Also, they find that there are too many sincere religious fanatics trying to biblethump their way out of captivity for them to have any chance of doing so. Since man is not created equal, and because dim minds tend to fall into prisons, especially since gov't emptied out mental institutions years ago, it is very often that the worst of religious depredation can be witnessed here.

Right now I'm suffering one. He is apparently normal in all respects at casual acquaintance, but closer contact reveals that he will not read or learn anything but Christian materials, and it is of the lowest quality (Evangelical). He admits boredom from re-reading the bible, yet spends most of the evening picking at his feet or feigning sleep in an apparent catatonic state re-living the past or squatting on feet, knees, elbows and forehead on the floor or the top rack praying. Soon as I turn to sleep, immediately shuts off the light and spends all night, apparently, and every night, playing with his genitals until the breakfast garbage is shoved through the hole and I require the light on. His prostate gland is so swollen from his constant, long-term self-abuse that he has extreme difficulty urinating. He will not see the medic, wash or change his sheets despite dragging much floor dirt up there from his prayer sessions. He does occasionally change his clothes, and spends much time wallering around on the floor and against the wall in the attitude of homeless alcoholics though he's done almost no illegal drugs and very little alcohol. (He's barely 21 years old.) This hobo behavior only occurs after he has made heroic efforts to sleep all day. He has repeated this cycle daily for months with negligible variation since arriving in this tworack cage. Before him was another, slightly older sex and religion addict of much the same demeanor, except cleaner. Also, he had wit enough to think, after hearing a radio commercial for Paxil, that his "nut" medicine may be causing his "sexual side effect" of difficulty urinating.

I've met and lived with very many fellow captives and this is representative of them all to more or lesser degree. Most harbor at least mild neuroses or delusions. Not all are sex addicts. Taken away from friends and almost all other sources of pleasure, including palatable food, games, reading material, TV, radio, etc and given steel and blank walls, defective pens, no paper, no stamps and no one to write, it is natural that one's world would shrink to the only source of endorphins the guards, lawyers, cops and politicians have as yet been unable to steal from us. Small environments create small minds.

There are easily found 20 penpal ads in this one prison of thousands in America and 2.1 million prisoners (not including jails) to pull into these nonsensical bible research feedback loops. The waste is evident here as it is colossal. The waste is even more evident when we consider that the essential teachings of religion minus the mythology can be boiled down into a few "golden" rules.

By far the greatest waste of religion is the use to which gov'ts put it, which is to commit mass murder and mass destruction for the benefit of the ruling classes. If citizens were educated against the scandalous nonsense of eternal bliss after commission of monsterous crimes against humanity for God and flag, the gluttons of privilege and the hereditary rich would have a slightly harder time destroying the environment and our worthwhile edifices upon it. We could have a larger goal than producing a population explosion of innocent children to convert and patriate to our short-term whim.

To the chagrin of most, there are higher goals than carpeting the planet with humanity, praising non-existent deities, rapid economic growth, more sex, faster vehicles, tastier food, better drugs, killing infidels, enjoying travel, sports, gambling and living in luxurious mansions in the pristine countryside adjacent to a metropolis with plenty of servants and pets.

Sex, drugs and riches are nice, but more satisfaction can probably be had in the long term by cooperating between hedonistic pursuits in achieving immortality.We are within grasp of immortality, except for two obstacles: Church and gov't. Church and thus politicians seeking to stay elected are forcing us to remain ignorant of medical technologies that are required to obtain immortality. In short, the combination of cancer research, cloning, genetics and cellular biology, among others, hold the secret to living forever, except in the case of accidental or purposeful death. Age-related infirmity can be cured this century if only we could kick off the chains of religious conviction, avoid major politician's wars and cooperate. A century is a long time given the accelerating pace of technological explosion rendered possible by education, communications and computer advances: we may well achieve all this despite continued massive Church, gov't and corporate waste of every resource we have.

With immortality comes twin necessities of population control or colonization of other environments. Instead, we'll continue the ongoing policy of war, famine and pestilence in lieu of sensible population control efforts. Add to this death by industrial toxins. Even without immortality we would still be wise to control our population and colonize marginal environments in the oceans, air, polar caps, the moon, Mars, space and beyond. 'his century is the one in which we deliberately adapt ourselves to live permanently in environments we would never have had time to evolve into naturally. This artificial evolution will occur despite anything Church or gov't do to prevent it. Since it is the opposite of life's nature to control birthrates, evolution through natural selection and death will continue along with the exploitation of every possible niche. A conscious, logical, planned future will leave us with more of our ecology to enjoy. A murderous, greedy, distructive future will leave us inhabiting a lonesome wasteland. Worse, the time available for a conscious decision is slipping away faster than our population grows and our wastes pile up. Earth is a big place that carries a lot of inertia. We won't be forced to clean our air until we begin choking to death, and then it will be as easy as stopping a massive dynamo with our bare hands, which is to say impossible. When this happens, the richest 20% will build luxurious caves to hide in to watch the remaining of us smother and die. Then the survivors will notice that they must hide much longer than their supplies and energy reserves will last. They will suffer enormous destruction expelling 80% of their fellows. Much later, the last survivors of humanity will die of--guess what?--poor planning! Good bye, you arrogant fools. Better luck to the next genus of squirrel-like mammals who inherit the ruins by default. Hope our damage isn't so bad that the winner doesn't have to again crawl out of the sea.

To sum up, the actual cost of religion is much higher than anyone has calculated, and in its present form, demanding no birth control, will cost us our extinction; that is, if the gov't and hereditary rich don't do it to us first.