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I just finished listening to the Audible Audiobook version of  The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True.  I don’t think I learned a lot that I didn’t know, but I enjoyed every moment of the book.  Clear, entertaining, often humorous.  I’d like every child in America to hear it.   It rings of truth with every word, and it would be a wonderful beginning for a young mind.  Richard and his wife take turns reading, and I found myself thinking they are lucky to found one another.

I’m similarly lucky, and I know that I greatly appreciate not having to hide myself at home.  It’s hard enough to stay underground with my family of origin, and it’s even more difficult to be quiet in the workplace,  while listening to fundamentalist, conservative rubbish.  Of course, having seen the treatment of other rational people, I still think it’s worthwhile to stay in the secular “closet” there.  I’m still surprised that an environment composed almost entirely of engineers can support such superstitious people, and that they feel so free to demonize those who disagree with them.

I noticed that there’s a  “Reason Rally” in March of this year.  I’m hopeful I can make that.  It would be awfully refreshing to be lost in a mass of reasonable people.  I remember how the early Obama rallies felt, with a hugely diverse crowd of warm caring and hopeful people, and I suspect that a rally of atheists would feel the same.   I’ve lost faith in Obama to represent my views, but I haven’t lost faith in humanity.

Religion has always depended on willful ignorance.  Faith is a pure and open expression of disbelief in your own powers of reasoning.  With the exception of the small fraction of adult converts, religion depends on careful conditioning of the innocent, gradually removing the power of reason from whole areas of life.  And that same conditioning is the public policy of fundamentalism.  “Teach the controversy” is an incremental and versatile  tool to create and embrace ignorance.  Creationism depends on a closed mind and a lack of curiosity about genetic history.  Anyone examining the world from an open position would be no more capable of believing in a 10,000 year old earth than of a regression of turtles supporting the Earth on their back.

Religion has often been a key component of politics.  Early rulers (including  the Christian Emperor Constantine) mandated state religion and cynically used it as a tool of control and conquest.  When region is conflated with morality it can be used a tool without appearing to be based in human motives.  This has allowed suppression of many minorities and both perceived and real enemies.

The techniques used by religion are now cynically manipulated to support the fear based Republican agenda build power and benefit favored corporations.  Xe (previously Blackwater) can not be profitable unless fear and hatred of American is growing.  Exxon/Mobil can not be profitable in a world where Global Warming is prevented. Northrop Grumman,  Lockheed Martin and Raytheon need insurgents to sell UAV’s.

Evangelical Fundamentalism, conservation and right wing authoritarianism are all faces of ignorance and use ignorance to breed fear.  Fear of the minority, fear of the different, and fear of becoming a minority.  It takes concentrated and willful ignorance to ignore the cost of security theater, totalitarian security and environmental catastrophe.   Fear produces hate both of and for the fearful and hate builds more fear.  And now that fear is the best tool to build power its production is as calculated and refined as any other product of modern society.