12 February—Every Friday, presumably in the interest of promoting the convenience of organized religious worship, the Republican-American publishes a listing of places of worship in the area with little informational blurbs about each one. I don’t know whether it’s a freebie service in the interest of propagating numerous faiths or a revenue enhancer for the newspaper. Nor do I know how complete the listing is. It really doesn’t matter anyway.

Yesterday’s listing contains 110 churches and two synagogues, divided among 21 Christian faiths or denominations or sects (take your pick), including non-denominational Christian; plus, of course, the two Jewish venues, one Conservative, the other Reform. (Two Jews, two congregations, as the saying goes.)

All the faiths believe in and are supposed to worship the same Abrahamic god. That’s the monotheistic omnipotent deity of the ancient Jews (a.k.a. Hebrews), named after the patriarch Abraham. You may recall from Genesis 22 that Abraham was ready to sacrifice—i.e., kill—his son Isaac at the behest of God, but God relented so Abe killed a ram instead.

Sacrifice of one sort or another as well as obedience appear to be a sine qua non of religion; it doesn’t speak too highly of people’s opinions of their apparently demanding, even unreasonable gods, whom or which they fear above all else, even if they may love the deities. Kind of reminds you of abused spouses.

One wonders why the listing in the Republican-American doesn’t contain anything approaching all the Abrahamic faiths active in the area, like Islam, the Baháʼí Faith, Messianic Judaism, or dreaded Chabad Lubavitch. Not to mention the non-Abrahamic faiths and even organized atheism. Because people just have to belong to something.

Monotheistic Judaism of the Iron Age was derived from the polytheistic and monoaltristic (believing in a number of gods but ordinarily worshipping only one) Canaanite religion of the Bronze Age. That also really doesn’t matter, but it’s nice to know.

What does matter, however—and I repeat—is that all the religions or denominations or sects believe in and are supposed to worship the same Abrahamic god. Sure, Christians and Messianic Jews, among others, add Jesus the Savior/Messiah/Anointed One to the equation, but the essential deity remains the same.

So why the hell, within any given god set—say, Christians with Jesus, Jews without Jesus—are there so many different ways of worshipping the same Abrahamic god? Wouldn’t it make more sense for all Jews to do their thing the same way and all Christians to do their thing the same way?

And wouldn’t it make even more sense for the whole world to accept the fact that there’s only one god, if indeed that’s the case?

Wouldn’t everybody be happier and friendlier? Wouldn’t there be no religious wars? One god for all people to love. Fantastic concept. And you wouldn’t even have to fear or worship a benevolent god because a benevolent god would surely forgive even if he—or she if the god turned out to be a goddess—couldn’t or simply didn’t forget.

Don’t be silly. Because whether or not God or gods exist, religions are created by men primarily to control other men. Certainly religions depend to an extent on faith, but what really keeps them going is fear, hope, and ritual. Isn’t that what dogma is all about? Ignorance helps; in some cases, sheer stupidity. And while penalties for breaking laws of men can be pretty severe, you never want to mess with the laws of gods, whoever or whatever those gods may be.

Keep in mind, too, that religion is a great excuse for committing all manner of evil and atrocities that really have nothing at all to do with gods.

Because gods are without question more powerful than men, the clever bugger who came up with the god concept in prehistoric times really knew what he was doing. Sorry, what I meant is that the slick opportunist who decided to use the true, existing god as a means of behavior and political control was an absolute genius . . .