Hello, I’m Bob Ladner. I’ve been a UU since 1979 and a member of this congregation since 1983. I was reared in a Southern Baptist home. We went to church every Sunday unless we were sick or on vacation. Even on vacation, we had some observation of Sunday. Church was where you went to learn about and worship God.

At around 20, I came to question the validity of Christianity and then of all organized religion. I was very disturbed that what Baptists said was very different from what they did. I am now an orthodox, devout atheist, but also an active, engaged UU. In my opinion, most of organized religion is a plot by the clergy to terrorize the laity. Marx (Karl, not Groucho) said that religion is the opiate of the masses. I would add that the pain that religion is most effective in soothing is exactly the pain created by religious teaching about hell and the hereafter. The “immortal soul” handed out by priests is like the rings that people but in bulls’ noses. If you accept the immortal soul, the priest can lead you about in amazing ways.

Religious leaders are very good at handing out what isn’t theirs to begin with. For example, priests give men the right to control and even abuse their wives if they follow the teachings of the priest.

Priests are also good at blessing troops as they go of to war to kill other humans: God’s on our side, Gott mit Uns. "Thou shalt not kill." has a silent proviso, "unless it's a foreigner".

There are several accounts of humanity that shed light on the actual practice and effect of religion.
In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jarred Diamond sets out a model of human societies having four levels:
1. a clan of 30 to 100, everyone is related by blood or marriage,
2. a tribe of 100 to 1,000, comprising several clans, all adults know almost all the other adults in the tribe,
3. a supertribe of up to 50,000 with a strong-man leader, and
4. a nation-state with 100,000 or more.

Religion actually appears only in levels 3 and 4. If you don’t know the majority of the people in your group, you need a secure identification system, in effect a pseudo-kinship. If two strangers can recount the same illogical and incredible stories, they have proved they are members of the same group. One notices that the stories of religion are never logical; no religions are based on a belief that water flows down hill, that water is wet, or that stones are hard.

For thousands of years, religious beliefs were too important to leave to individual choice. This may have been a necessary stage in the development of human culture, but I think we have grown beyond this. How do we let go of the irrational beliefs of formal religion?

In the Lucifer Principle, Howard Bloom observes that people need to have control over at least part of their lives. If they have no control over the here and now, they can have control over the life hereafter. People will believe the most amazing things if they can have a sense of control, however illusory. This delivers the believers into the control of the religious leaders.

Perhaps I should be glad that religion is so effective in controlling people, there are a lot of people in need of control. In 21st century America, the religious right wants to control not only its adherents, but the whole society.

Imperial Hubris (Anonymous) tells us that the West is in a deadly contest with Islam. Holy Wars (Karen Armstrong) tells us that religious fanaticism has led to disastrous results in the past.

About a year before he died, my father (Charles) and I were talking on the phone. Just at the end of the conversation, he asked me, "why did you give up on Christianity?". I said something like "well that's a complicated question". I thought at first that I should write a letter to answer what might have been to him a serious question. If he really believed Christian dogma, I am hell bound.

But I thought about it. There was nothing I could say that would change his mind or make him feel better. If I could have changed his mind, I doubt I would have done it. He was 88. Who needs to be disillusioned that late in life. I come from a line of at least 40 generations of Christians. My maternal grandmother was born Roba Christian. Charles didn't really want a carefully reasoned answer. Any answer would have been hurtful. But maybe I need an answer. Maybe Rev Roberta can give me an answer to at least one of these questions.