"Jesus, guns, babies": Religious violence is now at the core of the Republican Party

[slightlv]

11. When I left Xtianity and became a Seeker at 14,

I thought I could easily tolerate just about any religion as long as I could ferret out the core truths. That's what I wanted... to find, correlate and contrast the core truths among the great and small religions and somehow... out of all that... come out with a grain of absolute truth. Ha! How naïve a teenager I was.

I finally settled into my own truth, which is what I think most of us tend to do, anyway... religion or no. But I find I can no longer be so forgiving or tolerant of (especially) structured religion. Most of them, especially those descended from the Middle East, are patriarchal and treat women like crap. Even when you do just a modicum of digging you'll find great stories of women in their old books; whereas, in their newer books, those old stories are completely wiped out (or at least the female figures are wiped out or turned into prostitutes).

All of those religions are based in violence. They're testosterone founded, because they're all descended from the religion of Marduk, who was the original Pagan religion that overthrew the matriarchal religions of the Middle East. Up until that point in time, when a region was conquered, the gods and goddesses of the conquered were incorporated into the victors' "family" through marriage to their gods and goddesses and life went on. Not so with Marduk. He conquered; he killed the gods and goddesses -- especially the goddesses. He was the flaming finger of God's vengeance. And we've been dealing with the patriarchy ever since. Damn him.