In the last decade, I watched the birth and ascension of Fox News with slack-jawed astonishment. I'd never witnessed anything like it before. The network's own anchors and pundits seemed to do everything they could to create and frame issues in ways which furthered the causes of Christian conservatives, big business, and the Bush administration. The methods employed by the entire racket have been the most obvious, dispicable means this side of Guan Tanamo. It most effective and commonly used tactic has been to announce over and over again that the American way of life is under attack by liberals. Never mind that every American is liberal compared to the average Muslim, and never mind that American values are easily more liberal than not. Fox News members have opted to throw around the label "liberal" in such a willy nilly way that viewers can easily imagine army's of evil liberals just waiting to take over their hometowns. "They" are out there and "they" want to impose their will upon you and your family. As we've seen with the War on Terror and the Iraq war, Fox News is quite adept at creating enemies. Terribly, they've gone so far as to pit honest, good American's against honest, good Americans for the sake of preserving religion.

Of course, this labeling and fear mongering tactic is designed to cause the wagons to circle, the people to prepare for battle and die in defense of their values. Being defensive involves closing one's mind to consideration of the real issues at hand. What I'm trying to get at is that the tactic employed by Fox is the same tactic that's allowed religion to survive for all these thousands of years.

Enemies and War have served Religion well. Religion has used them to hide behind family and national pride in order to avoid challenges to authority and questions of authenticity. I feel strongly that this is true. How else could stories as vague, unsubstantiated, contradictory, absurd, and fantastical as those that begat all major religions continue to be believed century after century? The only possible explanation lies in religious institutions' uncanny ability to avoid serious analysis, discussion, and debate regarding its authority, validity, logic, origin, methods, etc. Its my hope that this blog will help build a case against religion so powerful, so plain, concise, and logically sound that believers will be unable to ignore it. I'd like to think that it were possible to open eyes to the life-draining and even dangerous effects of religion.

Religion has ridden on the backs of good people for more than 2000 years. It has been an oppressor for far too long. Its time the world knows that life can be more than a struggle to make it to "paradise". Life is not a step towards something better. Life itself can be paradise if only we recognize the real barriers that stand in our way, rid ourselves of those barriers as best we can, imagine an ideal life, and do our best to live it till the end. Hmm..."Imagine"...nice word.. we should be free to imagine....