What is “Religious Faith in the Unknown?” and the accompanying “Religious Fear of the Unknown?” For many, it is two things. Fear, and the promise of reward. You cannot have “Faith” without the “Fear”, as they go hand in hand. The faith/belief (idea/notion) of spending eternity in a good place, like “Heaven” after you die (as a reward for being a “Righteous” person), will always be coupled with the fear of spending eternity in a very bad place called “Hell” for being a “Sinful” person, ultimately rejected by your “God” at the Pearly Gates.
I have known some very religious people that truly lived “Saintly” lives, but they did so with a mixture of fear and hope of that promise of reward. I also have known a few people that didn’t have a single religious bone in their body and lived what we would call, a “Righteous or Saintly” life, and throughout their lives, they never feared “Hell” (or death) and they never hoped to someday be in Heaven. I also have known the ultra-religious types that were the ultimate personification of what we call a “Hypocrite” and really did not believe in ANYTHING other than themselves.
So what is the answer or point to all this? If you are a religious person, you more than likely live your life trying to avoid the 
conscious or subconscious fear of “Hell Fire and Brimstone” that was taught to you all your life, and you believe that your attempt at living a saintly life will get you a Passport to your concept of “Heaven” and your place in the Heavenly Choir, or your 20 virgins that were promised to you, or your reincarnation as a higher life-form like a Cow.
But assuredly, on your deathbed just before your final breath, you will still be wondering if you will end up in your preconceived version of “Hell” because you just once, had a thought in your mind of fucking your neighbor’s wife while the neighbor (and friend) was on deployment to Afghanistan. Whatever the so-called past “Sin” in your life was/is, that had plagued you most of your life, it WILL come back to you perhaps with your last dying breath (if you are not already in a drug-induced coma). And then you do die, not knowing for certain whether you are going up, or down. Then some stranger at your funeral says, “Bob is looking down on us from Heaven now, smiling, as he’s playing his Trombone in God’s Heavenly Orchestra”. Then a mourner at your Wake says, “Hey Richard, did Alice make her famous Fried-Chicken? Let’s get a beer”………(Sure, so long, Bob).
Fear is bondage. For religious folks, that fear is forever a part of your psyche as well. You can’t totally eliminate the fear unless you are psychotically delusional. I have known a few of those types and they are as much unknowingly involved in their madness as hypocrites are knowingly involved in their deception. I believe that an unrealistic hope in the hereafter can sometimes be a form of bondage as well when it takes your eyes off of the here-and-now.
For the truly religiously psychotic who are delusional, their madness overcomes their fear, but the madness in itself is visible to most people, and is damaging to the person and to everyone else around him or her that succumbs to the madness, think “Jonestown” or any other example of madness masquerading as religion. 
One of my pet peeves in a similar regard is the madness of following some dude that convinces his “Flock” to donate a huge chunk of their life savings so he can purchase his fifth or sixth private jet (I lost count)…..You know the dude, because he just can’t fly with all those “Demons” on commercial airliners.
Personally, I was indoctrinated from early childhood into that “Fear and Hope of Reward System” as a “Christian”. For me, although I believe that I had always been a normal kid, growing into a normal young adult teenager, then maturing into a somewhat normal adult, for the first half of my life, the fear of eternal damnation was always just around the corner, like a mad dog with rabies.
However, as I matured through my young adult stage into full-fledged adulthood, I slowly began to wake up and understand the differences between “Religions” as a man-made tool of submission and oppression, and the innate nature of humans. to be free, and how applying something as simple as the Golden Rule without all the mumbo-jumbo hocus-pocus of Hell versus Heaven could free a person from fear of death.
This life-long journey of discovery along with “Common Sense” began to ramp up for me when I was in my early fifties, and it has been a continuing learning/discovery process. Now at seventy-two, I can say that I have no fear of death, I do not believe in Heaven or Hell, and I strive to be a practitioner of the Golden Rule every single day of my life. “Common Sense” is a great weapon against fear. When I finally realized for me at least, what a scam on mankind religion really was, I not only eliminated fear of eternal damnation in a fiery pit of Hell, I also lost all fear of death itself. What a wonderful thing, to no longer fear death.
I don’t care WHAT religion you are practicing, if you fear death, because you have been taught to fear whatever brand of purgatory your religion teaches, you are in bondage, plain and simple. However, if you simply follow the “Golden Rule”, you will no longer have fear of Eternal Damnation, and you will no longer be hoping for a spot in God’s Rock Band “The Five Shepherds”, or no longer be hoping for those 20+ Vestal Virgins that were promised to you, or whatever else that your religion may have promised you.
I was inspired to write this little essay in response to a Facebook Friend, a “Religious” person, , who was offended, and had responded to one of my recent “God” Memes (see above) that I had published on FB recently. Here is what my initial “Comment Response” was, and then I’ll conclude with my closing thoughts:
“It’s all in jest, a little comedy in the midst of all the tragedy and suffering around the world today. When people are offended by something intended to be a comedic approach to life, they miss the whole underlying point of the message, and it’s a message that can be interpreted in many ways. If you don’t understand it, that’s OK, but you must understand that it is not my intent to ridicule or do harm to others.
The problems that we ALL have in ALL of our various societies is because of the differences people have with one another based on their particular religious beliefs. I do not apologize for comedy, nor should anyone else. If I was preaching from a pulpit in some church and actually said some really evil things about a religious belief of one kind or another, that would obviously be a different thing. P. S. I’m pretty sure ALL the “Prophets” way back when had to have had a sense of humor, dealing with everything and everyone at the time. People need to lighten up and take a deep breath, and relax”.
In closing, people of whatever “Religious” flavor have had a notion, some for a few thousand years, that THEIR “Religion” is the ONLY “Way” or “Path” to “Eternal Life with God, in Heaven”. This always was and still is, a part of the nature of religions because of competition. It’s always been, “It’s MY WAY, or the Highway, dude, if you don’t follow MY Silver Turtle, you will not get to Heaven”. Through the short, written/known history of our species, religions have been responsible for more torture and deaths of innocent people than any other cause.
Cultural differences and “Who’s on First” as I call it, have also played a role in perpetrating horrendously barbaric acts on others. With “Christianity”, it wasn’t until a few hundred years had passed when it evolved from a Middle-Eastern religion practiced mostly by people darker than “White”, into a white-man’s religion which spread from Rome (white dudes) into Europe (more white dudes), who then forced it via violence throughout the rest of the world, (mostly non-white peoples). 
Heaven forbid the thought, but guess what folks, Jesus was not a “White” dude. In fact, there’s a good chance that Jesus was black, or at least a mixture of Dark-Brown and Black. You don’t hear the White folks preaching THAT too often do you.
I am not going to further this thought with a dissertation on the rest of the religions except to say that as a species, people are beginning to wake up and recognize that what we did as humans for a few thousand years is done. It’s over. We ate that shitty porridge long enough. So, get over it.
In closing, here are a few thoughts taken from a previous website posting of mine from July 12th, 2019 BEFORE Epstein was either “Clintonized” or whisked off to a Plastic Surgeon in Tel Aviv-Yafo.
It is comforting, and a feeling of gratification that I have lived long enough to not only witness, but feel a small part of this “Great Awakening” portion of our evolution as a species. It has taken decades, with the advent of the age of computers, the internet, and social media, for ordinary people with extraordinary common sense to begin to wake up to this “New Age”, which IS part of the beginning, i.e., “The Dawning of the Age of Aquarius”.
God is NOT dead. News Flash! He just never existed in the first place, and people are waking up and recognizing that. In place of religion, a new sensibility based on Common Sense and our evolutionary awakening as a species is emerging, as people begin watering the flowers on the graves of “Religion” in their own minds and hearts. This new awareness really isn’t new, it’s been there all along. It’s just more enhanced via technology and the ability to “Share”.
Along with mankind’s insanely archaic religiosity, what is dying a slow death is everything related to it; Wars, Human Suffering, and so many other negative attributes that our species has been a slave to for thousands of years.
On one hand, it certainly is pathetic how the so-called modern day “Christians” are reacting to the world around them. How can one not be appalled by the recent FB post wherein a so-called “pastor” said, “Immigrant detention centers are good for kids because they can still have church services”. 
Or how can a normal human being be OK with, justify, and be a part of, the apartheid treatment of the Palestinian people? Look at our U. S. Senate and House of Representatives (our Congress), and see how many of the politicians have Dual-Citizenship with the apartheid government that is currently occupying Palestine. Even the REAL Jewish people are opposed to, and demonstrate against, the so-called State of Israel.
The “Light of Aquarius” has begun to shine brighter and brighter on the malignity with our species that has been there all along, just look at the news. Epstein? He has lived out his usefulness to the Mossad and it won’t surprise me if he conveniently and covertly dies of “Natural Causes”. If the headlines read, “Epstein found hanging in his cell with a baseball bat stuck up his ass”, it won’t be suicide, it’ll be death by “Bubba”. If it REALLY appears to be an unfortunate death due to a “Heart Attack, that will be one of his elite clients hiring a professional “Hit-man”. If he mysteriously disappears, along with his money, he will be living out the remainder of his life in the Zionist’s so-called State of Israel. Speaking of the Middle East? Shit’s going to start happening that the zionists are not going to be happy with.
On the other hand, our species HAS been in the early stages of a great awakening as we evolve. Religions of ALL kinds and types are slowly dying, some religions will take a little longer to become just a footnote in our history as a species, but for sure, we are evolving into a different, more honest and humane species.
One of the first to go? Christianity and especially the evangelical zionist christians. Along with them, hand in hand, we will also see the zionists who will be flushed down the cesspool of mankind.
If you follow the Golden Rule, you will see an amazing transformation take place in your life, as you will no longer be guided by the centuries old, and out-lived, part of our evolution as a species called religion, and your life will be guided by the here-and-now, not by the what-was and what-could-be.
Peace & Abide, La paz y la morada, السلام والالتزام , שלום ושמירה, Paix et Demeure, Խաղաղությունը եւ մնալը, Мир и пребывание,, 平和と遵守, 和平與恪守, Aştî û Abad, صلح و عبید, Fred och Abide, Kapayapaan at Patuloy, Frieden und Bleiben, Mir i Ostanite, शांति और निवास, Hòa bình và ở lại, Мир и Абиде, שלום און בלייַבן, สันติภาพและการปฏิบัติ, Mir in bivanje,
Yadhum oore yaavarum kelir, “The World Is One Family”
Dr. T. C. Saxe, DD, RSISHE
For those who have been keeping up with my progress with “The Dead Armadillo” story, here’s my latest:
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