"THE RELIGIOUS HANG-UP" FROM "FELIX GREENE's BOOK (THE FIRST ENEMY-"NOTES ON IMPERIALISM AND REVOLUTION")(LAST PART)!

it's normal today among the young and the progressive to deny the existence of "GOD", and it may therefore appear strange that we should list religious belief among the salient features of the "bourgeois" mentality. We do so because, whatever the current attitude towards a belief in "GOD" might be, the ideology of religion is still sufficiently widespread and it still so deeply pervades western societies as to constitute an effective barrier to the liberation of human thought.
From the earliest dawn of history man appears to have speculated on the nature of reality. The search for ultimate truth has been unflagging. Countless thousands of devoted and gifted men have spent their lives attempting to prove that this doctrine or that reveals the nature of reality. But never has there been sustained agreement. From the same facts different man have drawn quite opposite conclusions. The prevailing beliefs of one generation are abandonned by the next; and men everywhere continue to this day to preach, argue, get angry and if necessary slaughter each on behalf of their particular belief system. Quite clearly, his system of beliefs forms parts of man's psychological security and he will mobilize almost as powerful a set of defensive mechanisms to product his beliefs as he will to protect his physical possessions.
Man has always had to live in a universe he only partially understands. He is confronted with forces and powers over which he can exercise only a limited control but which press upon his life and insist on conformity with their laws. In spite of the enlarging range of information about his environment, his knowledge is but a tiny beam of a pocket flash-light groping the dark expanses of an unknown desert. Man knows enough to formulate questions to which he can find no answers inexperience. Answers to all the biggest questions still remain in the areas of speculation.
Man's past response to this situation in which unknows loom so large, in which natural laws are so inexorable and in which he knows that be, as an individual creature, is doomed to die. His past response to this total situation is what is called religion; and his attempts to formulate some intelligible and reassuring account of his relationship with the mysterious and threatening world around him, gave birth to the myths, the "creeds", the "dogmas", the "beliefs" by means of which men have attempted to find a measure of reassurance.
Western religions(unlike some in the east) take the divine origin of man as their starting point and on this taken-for-granted basis have constructed the immense edifice of beliefs that have protected man from reality. Central to all western religions is the concept of a divine "father" who has revealed what rules of conduct he wishes his human children to follow. That there was some survival usefulness in this concept of an extra-human law-maker can not be doubted. If a primitive society was to preserve its cohesion and to compel its individual members to conform to social customs, it required a sanction outside itself. Thus, the tribal rules of conduct became much more than socially useful rules, they became divinely ordained laws. And from the divine law-maker there was no escape. However, alone you were, however seperated from your tribal group, the all-seing eye was there watching you. In the very depths of the jungle, in the vast spaces of the desert you were being watched.As a technique to maintain social cohesion, it was a useful device and perhaps in the earlier stages of man's development a necessary one.
Belief in all-powerful, all-seing "Father-God" was an extension of the child's experience of his human "Father". To a small child his Father appears godlike: He is omnipotent; he is the provider; in his arms one feels no fear; he brings protection, comfort, security, love. Buth the human Father is also capable of terrible anger and has constantly to be propitiated. Every child is aware of the necessity to submit to his Farther, and this became later his submission to his "Father-God": They will, oh Lord, not mine be done. "RELIGION, in thus extending into later life attitudes appropriate to childhood, acted as a mechanism for the control of the adult!
"That's to say clearly, the religious ethics appear to be the roots a strong child education. the more, a child is educated religiously, the more he can give respect and honor to his parents. "GOD" ought to be at the center of any strong family education"!
(YVES T BOUAZO)(the "title" and the "conclusion" are from the "staff")("sources": "the Enemy-Notes on Imperialism and Revolution" from "FELIX GREENE")