Apakah kita perlu berterima kasih akan pembantaian PKI, pengeboman Bali dan berbagai pelanggaran HAM? Apakah sejarah-sejarah gelap kalian sekarang sudah tertutup di bawah bangunan-bangunan institusi agama, dilupakan dengan pencucian otak masyarakat?
Tulisan ini bukan bertujuan untuk menyudutkan suatu pihak agama, melainkan mempertanyakan apakah kita perlu memegang kepercayaan beragama yang seharusnya bersifat pribadi sampai ke ranah politik dan sosial.

Proses demokrasi yang lambat dan tidak terlihat arahnya dalam era reformasi ini menyebabkan ketergantungan masyarakat akan suatu keyakinan baru, suatu sistem yang praktis dan cepat, meskipun sistem itu akan membunuh demokrasi tersebut. Demokrasi hanyalah menjadi jalan pintas untuk menuju totalitarian baru yang kehilangan kemanusiaannya. Keyakinan akan demokrasi haruslah kita pegang teguh untuk kebebasan kita untuk berkembang, berekspresi dan beropini, bukan hanya untuk generasi kita saja tapi juga untuk yang mendatang.

Ada banyak jenis mata. Bahkan Spinks pun punya mata: dan karena itu ada banyak “kebenaran”, dan karena itu tak ada “kebenaran”. – Nietzsche

So yes, let’s talk about the money!
After you have your loyal flocks, start taxing them in the name of the Holy God.
5%, 10% or more who would give a fuck, it’s the God’s will and they are just bunch of fearful sheep. The credit will go to the God, even if it’s only for your own wealth and for the propaganda sake (to get more flocks and more money of course).
Plus by now you are a tax-free institution, there is no way you’ll go bankrupt. Just make sure you already had and known the insurance which is the bible, teach them some irrational nonsense and give them some shitty gay advice from it and you’ll be set for your life and retirement, securely.

Every religion has their own version of Utopia, except Buddha with its promise to end its reincarnation cycle. Islam and Christian Utopia has a similarity in the goal, a good & holy place without any sin. But how the society can’t ever found a problem in its cycle. Every problems are created by individual and social interaction. Men has tried to manage this problem since the beginning of their ages, from imperialism, socialism, liberalism, even the most totalitarian system to every individualism created another problem. Religion use a totalism ideology, as you can see today and from history, it can’t answer to all society problem fairly. In my point of view, the idea of heaven seems vague. Even if a utopia filled with unlimited resources, the social interaction & the difference of each individual create problems.
The Catholics believe in purification of souls in purgatory concept, but isn’t it as same as making a new human as pure as the day he/she born, without the beauty of knowledge and thinking. Even the communist did that. It’s the elimination of human nature that makes human unique, isn’t it going back to the fear of emptiness that we’ve feared since the first time…

There’s a witch hunt coming, screaming out on it’s rebirth
There’s a crusade coming, Hellfires back here on earth
See the light in their eyes shine, listen to their words like swords
The Christian militia is marching now
There’s a witch hunt coming, born out of all the American fears
There’s a new purge coming, an inquisition for all of us here
Hold onto your sanity as best you can
While some Hitler claims to speak for the Son of Man
The Christian militia is marching now
Hatred makes the adrenaline flow
Stir up the fire watch it grow
Everybody loves a righteous cause
Old lives forgotten in holy wars
Everything forgotten in holy wars

There’s a nightmare coming, shut up your doors close your mind
There’s a nightmare coming – Born Again, born again blind
The girls show the way, then show us their legs
With American showbiz razzmatazz
With sex in one hand and a gun in the other, Christ returns
The right-wing respectable clampdown clan
Find their figure head in a holy man
Here come the Christians as hysterical mob
Worshipping the Devil in the name of God
Worshipping the Devil in the name of God

Christian Militia
by New Model Army

Fundamentalism & evangelicalism share the same conceptual base, except fundamentalism distorts & betrays the basic true religious concerns of evangelical. Instead finding the “warm, living gospel”, fundamentalism had become cold & hardened in its doctrines.

source: Conway, Flo, and Siegelman, Jim. Holy Terror, The Fundamentalist War on America’s Freedoms in Religion, Politics and Our Private Lives. 1st. USA: Doubleday, 1982. Print.

Does fundamentalism really preach about gospel of salvation for men? Or does it use the gospel as a weapon in an ideological conquest of men?

This is Jerry Falwell’s concept of “Saturation Evangelism”, which remarkably similar to Jacques Ellul (social philosopher) description of total propaganda as “a direct attack against man”:

Propaganda must be total. The propagandist must utilize all of the technical means at his disposal – the press, radio, TV, movies, posters, meetings, door-to-door canvassing. … Each usable medium has its own particular way of penetration. … To draw the individual into the net of propaganda, each technique must be utilized … and fused with all the other media, each of them reaching the individual in specific fashion and making him react anew to the same theme – in the same direction, but differently.

These are propaganda methods that were adopted by the fundamentalist today by utilizing available current technology. But it needs more than a multimedia blitz, to command individuals and whole nations, total propaganda must claim to reach something higher, appeal to some larger purpose, to broad principles or values or, better yet, to the indisputable attraction of the mystical. It is in myth and mysticism, this deep-rooted area of feeling and belief. But by fundamentalists, they use terror as the myth:

The world is near to the end and you could die in every moment. How can you save yourself? Jesus is the only one who can do it. Believe him and he will guarantee a safe place for you.

source: Conway, Flo, and Siegelman, Jim. Holy Terror, The Fundamentalist War on America’s Freedoms in Religion, Politics and Our Private Lives. 1st. USA: Doubleday, 1982. Print.

An inspirational poem by Corliss Lamont’s,
which can be found in his book,
The Philosophy of Humanism.