Mickijo,

Ageed. "The Shoes of a Fisherman" has never played well with the Cardinals of all Faiths, from the before the First Temple, to the Crystal Cathedral, and into the future. Plenty of sermons on tithes; nothing on usery.

Marx,

I have travelled through urban and regional Russia. The Russians seem maligned and emotionally defeated people. Not only have they been suppressed by the likes of Stalin, but also, probably to a greater extent by the Orthodox Church: Peasants praying in gildered cages. Its sad.

If Sells can't believe in his own thinking power without referring to some forgotten quote of some forgotten person, what hope is there in the world?
Yes, there is no hope when people can't think but rely on some dead quoter.
Sells, believe in yourself and not some gossip that was put in a book a couple of centuries ago.
Heaven, you are standing in it right now.
There is no evidence that there is anything else but now because you have to be dead to collect that evidence.
Being dead does not mean your heart stops beating and then starts again. That is for some TV show for entertainment. Being dead means to not come back alive again. Death is permanent.
We are in Heaven, right now. It doesn't get any better.

Yes Glenwriter, Those who are looking for comfort should realise that our departed lovred ones are happy, love us forever, and never leave us because they here with us now. And just think, millions and millions of Indigneous people surround us on a daily basis.

There is no after-life

Belief in an afterlife is what anthropologists see as magical thinking. Primitive peoples believe that death as the end of immortal naturalistic progression caused by the intersession of evil. Perhaps, the magic of a malevolent shaman, an elipse or the sighting of a rare bird are bring the evil disrupts the natural order. Thus, reconciling the belief with everyday experiences; wherein, the magical and naturalistic orders can seem to co-exist, as truth to the believer: But this belief system also denies our rightful place in the natural order. We live, we die, stop.

In Judeo-Christian mythology many elements remain. The Immortals', Adam and Eve, paradise lost (Milton) is occasioned by evil and in this instance death becomes their leagacy and that of future generations. The newly "evil" now indwell "within" the fiction and need a way out to find immortality. Herein, redemption and the path to immortality is achieved by recognition of one's evil self: Salvation and an afterlife found are found belief in a redeemer.

(The Great Relionist Inversion, methinks: no good acts on bad: not bad acting on good.)

Otherwise put, the primitive concept is that individual people are good and immortal and evil intervenes. The ancient fiction (c. 4,000 BCE) transmutes this, all of humanity is indigneously evil and sinful (absolute good cannot be found without God) and heaven is found in belief in a divine conduit to the after-world.

...

Death exits. Heaven does not. Neither, primitivism nor religionism changes the inevitable. Be kind towards your fellows and enjoy your tentitive extistence. Soon it will be gone.

Belief is different to reality.
Reality is different to belief.
Some believe that belief is reality.
That is their belief and has no connection to reality.
Belief is in the mind. Let them live there in their subjectivity
Reality is outside the mind in objectivity.

Sells,

Again you proffer the simplistic and unsubstantiated implication that Marx’s ideas, in and of themselves, were the cause of slaughter and misery. No doubt, in an attempt to have people dismiss them.

Being a Senior Research Officer at the Department of Physiology in a University, surely you have learnt that it is not scientific or credible to make simplistic causal claims without examining and acknowledging other contributing factors.

A few questions for you to research:

How many men, women and children died before their time in the mines and factories of Europe due to working 16 hour days, or simply from starvation due to unemployment, in the 18th & 19th Centuries?

How many people were “slaughtered” in WWI ? (i.e. before the Russian Revolution).

What were the conditions of workers and peasants under the Czarist regime in Russia?

How many “non – Marxist, and one must say, predominantly Christian” countries contributed forces and resources to the counter-revolutionary effort of the Russian White Army during the civil war in Russia after the revolution? How many Russians – who had merely taken democratic control of their own resources - were killed by them?

How many people died as a result of WWII?

How many people have been slaughtered in the last few years in Iraq?

You should also examine your assumption that Stalinism (or Maoism etc) was Marxism. You fail to take into account that there was a not insubstantial Marxist opposition to Stalin – of course he exiled or executed them all. Stalin’s theory of “socialism in one country” had nothing in common with international socialism.

You ought also to consider the fact that the relatively good conditions that working people enjoy in industrialized countries (which are now being eroded), were capitalist concessions to the socialist struggles of the working class. Were it not for socialism and Marxism, you would still be working 16 hours a day in a factory – and you probably wouldn’t be a Senior Research Officer – oh sorry – you might be a preacher.

Things are not as simple as Marxism = slaughter = evil.