I hadn’t seen this one before. It’s interesting to see how he builds up his story. What he says is terrifying. 44% of the Americans is unbelievable dumb. The mightiest country on earth, loaded with military, believes in total nonsense.
The time for respect for religion is long past. The time for political correctness is over.
He clearly lays out what the greatest challenge is of this century: curing our friends, family, relatives and any other human from these absurd ideas. We have to confront them with the notion that they are lunatic, idiots if they really fill their brains with religious nonsense.
Here is a bonus:
Personally, I think, that the answer lies not in battling on ideas on the current state of science. I think we should discuss history. And what exactly happened the past 6000 years.
This is a good start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osiris
Egypt was founded by people who practiced cannibalism. Straight from the stone ages like everyone did those days:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice
These people, the Nilotecs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nilotic believed that people are what they eat. So they ate even their parents. Slowly these ideas became mingled with the Osiris religion
“He eats men, he feeds on the gods…he cooks them in his fiery cauldrons. He eats their words of power, he swallows their spirits…. He eats the wisdom of every god, his period of life is eternity…. Their soul is in his body, their spirits are within him.”
seizeth those who are a follower of Set…he breaketh their heads, he cutteth off their haunches, he teareth out their intestines, he diggeth out their hearts, he drinketh copiously of their blood!
If you have followed the wikipedia link on Human Sacrifice you will not wonder about the cruelty.
Although crude, this was a core concept, the conviction that one could receive immortality by eating the flesh and blood of a god who had died became a dominating obsession in the ancient world. The cult of Osiris thus did not outlaw dismemberment and eating of enemies, and practiced the ritual rending and eating of the sacred bull, symbolizing Osiris.
So slowly the more primitive cannibalistic offering ideas were replaced with the idea of Osiris, the savior, who could bring immortality by his death and offerings.
Primitive!
The sacrament however, the stone-age thoughts of offering or eating humans was still spread all over the world.
1000 years later, in that same Egypt, the mythical figure Moses:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_Bible , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torah
wrote, according to legend, the Torah, the first 5 books, part of the old testament.
Influenced by not only the Egyptian, Osiris civilization but also other great civilizations like Babylon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panbabylonism
Particularly the idea of 1 God, invented also in Egypt, but 400 years earlier:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atenism
And the 10 commandments from the Book of Death of the Egyptians.
1300 years later a new Jewish sect arose. Every religion has thousands of sects, not only now but also then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sect , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_sects , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divisions_of_Islam
“sects lay a claim to possess unique and privileged access to the truth or salvation and “their committed adherents typically regard all those outside the confines of the collectivity as ‘in error’”.
This sect was based around the jew Jesus. It took the sect 30 years to decide, in a meeting, that several Jewish traditions were no longer required, although first debated.
And contrary to the Jewish religion who finally got rid of human offerings or god offerings. The only single core concept it brought was the return of “the sacrifice of a super human” which would bring of course “super immortality” (back to square Osiris again). The original story of Adam and Eve (1500 years older) was changed to accommodate this to include “original sin” which Jesus solved. ALL the rest of traditions, beliefs, practices has been added the hundreds of years following by religious managers.
“eat my flesh, drink my blood”, this is what our forefathers said about 6000 years ago when they ate humans because they believed they would get “their power”.
Science now knows that you do not get the power of someone else when you eat him! Not only that but is seen as barbaric don’t you think?
Is this the complete story? No. You might want to read up on what all the other religions were doing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion and how they became “big” and where they all started.
You might want to start reading about writing and papyrus and how that started the development of philosophy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform
The oldest writing was invented by the Sumerians, 5000 years ago. It led to an amazing amount of things since it led to a more advanced way of transferring knowledge and building knowledge on knowledge other than oral.
Papyrus accelerated this. When transferred to Greece, soon afterwards,Philosophy started. It has a direct influence on new ideas and new religions and new scientific inventions. As with the printing press much later.
And now there is the Internet, the new library of Alexandria, hopefully this will cause another increase in knowledge and hopefully a new form of beliefs.
There is so much more to find out there.