Religious Delusions, American Style: Manipulations of the Public's Mind

Religious Delusions, American Style: Manipulations of the Public’s Mind

Copyright ©2019/2020 Blair Alan Gadsby. All Rights Reserved

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Gadsby, Blair Alan.

Religious Delusions, American Style—1st ed.

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Table of Contents

cover

Title Page

Copyright page

Dedication

Preface

Quotes over the Centuries

Introduction

The CONSTRUCTION of a DELUSION

A NEED for DECEPTION?

A WORD ABOUT the WORD CONSPIRACY

FORMAT of the BOOK with ALLUSIONS to METHOD

RESEARCH and EMPATHY

REFERENCES

Books/Essays

Natives, Puritans, Voodoo, and Founding Fathers: Religious Freedom in God’s Own Country

PAST MEETS PRESENT, or PRESENT is PAST

A NEW WORLD for GOD’S OWN COUNTRY

PARADISE, WE’VE got a PROBLEM

MANAGING the HEATHENS

The FOUNDERS’ VIEWS: BENIGN MONOTHEISM with a FREEMASONIC TWIST

REFERENCES

Books/Essays:

Government Documents

Evolution vs Creation, the Battle for the Country’s Body and Soul

Quotes

DARWINISM or SOCIAL DARWINISM? THAT is the QUESTION

A CRUEL WORLD at the TURN of the PREVIOUS CENTURY

NECESSITY and the MOTHERS of INVENTION

The POWER of COINCIDING EVENTS

The WARNING FROM the PAST

REFERENCES

Books/Essays

The Cold War Rhetoric of Atheism

Quotes

NO RELIGION (and RELIGION) As CULTURAL MEANS of COERCION

SELLING an EXPENSIVE THREAT to the AMERICAN PEOPLE

SEEKING a BETTER UNDERSTANDING of RELIGION for the SAKE of CIVIL SOCIETY: the CRITICAL THEORY of RELIGION

NAVIGATING the BIPOLAR WORLD of RELIGION and NO RELIGION in a MOSTLY-FREE COUNTRY, WHAT is the CITIZEN to do?

UNITED THEY (elites) STAND, DIVIDED WE (civil society and culture) FALL

REFERENCES

Books/Essays

Films, Documentaries, Internet Discussions

Jesus and the Palestinians: Christian Zionism

Quotes

The 1988 COUNTDOWN

A WORLD of WINNERS and LOSERS: ISRAEL/U.S. WINNERS, PALESTINIANS, WELL...

REGARDING SIGNS of THINGS to COME (a): WE’VE BEEN HERE BEFORE

REGARDING SIGNS of THINGS to COME (b): WE DON’T HAVE to GO THERE AGAIN

IN ALL THINGS RELIGIOUS, the PAST is NOW, and THERE is HERE

FROM TRINITY to TRIUMVIRATE: The AMERICAN WAY of RELIGION

REFERENCES

Books/Essays

Films/Documentaries

Chariots of the Gods? UFO Religions

Quotes

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS of the RURAL KIND

The UFO RELIGIONS

FLYING SAUCERS: A MATTER of MOVIES MORE than RELIGIONS

1951 (benevolence) 1953 (aggression)

A view from space A view toward space

The NEXUS of DISINFORMATION, PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE, and UFOs

LITTLE GREEN NAZIS

AMERICA’S NEAR-GLOBAL AIR DOMINANCE (for now)

REFERENCES

Books/Essays

Films/Documentaries

Endnote

The Dangerous Religious Cult: Jonestown

Quotes

The MOTHER of ALL CULTS

U.S. CLANDESTINE ACTIVITIES

ANOMALIES of the EVENT

U.S. and Guyanese governments’ and militaries’ presences along the way

Excessive quantities of psychotropic medications on site

Slow-to-develop body-count and mishandling of bodies – too few autopsies

MEDIA and the EVENT

The COLD WAR and LIBERAL RELIGION

The ABJECT FAILURE of RELIGIOUS STUDIES

ANOTHER WARNING from the PAST

REFERENCES

Books/Essays

Government Documents

Films/Documentaries

Internet Resource

A Defiant Lament

THE IMAGES of WACO and SEPTEMBER 11 (Witnessing Sacred Place and Sacred Time)

Armageddon at Waco, Texas: The Branch Davidians

Quotes

A LOCAL APOCALYPSE

RESUSCITATING SELF-DISGRACED LAW ENFORCEMENT INSTITUTIONS

PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS AGAINST the BRANCH DAVIDIANS and the PUBLIC

OUR WEAKENED (and WORSE) REGULATORY-LEGISLATIVE INSTITUTIONS

REFERENCE

Documentary Film

Additional References

Islam Comes to the Homeland on a Tuesday: 9/11

Quotes

The JOURNEY of MANY

KEEPING a TRADITION ALIVE and WELL: The FALSE FLAG

SHAKING the FOUNDATIONS

REFERENCE

Documentary Film

Additional Reference

The Politico-Media Establishment, Scholarship, and Activism

Quotes

SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES of POLITICO-MEDIA-DRIVEN DELUSIONS

AMERICAN POLITICS as NATIONAL CIVIC CULT: RELIGION as CULTURAL MEANS of COERCION, AGAIN

RELIGIOUS STUDIES as CULTURAL MEANS of COERCION and the ABJECT FAILURE of ACADEME, AGAIN

The MILITARY-POLITICAL USE of ACADEMIA, or the DEFENSE DEPARTMENT’S DEPARTMENT of RELIGIOUS STUDIES

SOLUTIONS from RELIGIOUS STUDIES?

The CURIOUS CASE of DAVID RAY GRIFFIN

REFERENCES

Books/Essays

Films/Documentaries/Lectures-Discussions

The Terms of Delusion

Acknowledgments

Index

Contents

Landmarks

Preface

Iinsist upon clarifying what this book is not prior to venturing into the historical delusions detailed in the following pages. This is not a work in the vein of a recent spate of books challenging the intellectual veracity of religious belief and/or exposing the weaknesses or malfeasance of religious institutions. Nor is it interested in the bad behaviors of explicitly or self-avowed religious individuals in our social and civic life. There is a list of books current to the past decade-to-thirty years that do just these: The End of Faith (2004) by Sam Harris, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (2007) by the now-late Christopher Hitchens who also anthologized The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-Believer in the same year. Richard Dawkins has long had an esteemed voice in the debate as well with, initially in 1986, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, and more recently in The God Delusion (2006) which is a rather scathing assault on religious belief.

Let the reader be aware that the use of the word "Delusion in Dawkins’ book is not at all what I mean by Delusions" in my title.

The issues raised by these authors are serious and all well worth their ink. And even if the debate about God’s existence or lack thereof and religion’s proper place in society has been acrimonious, it has nevertheless been mostly ongoing within many societies. Questions of divine metaphysics have persisted down through the millennia giving us no reason to believe this line of reasoning will end any time soon. And so, without doubt, much more ink will be spilt on the topic.

In fact, I, too, enjoy that debate from my vocation as a community college Religious Studies instructor in a large urban setting. It is a challenge taking these deeply engrained cultural traits, memes as they have more recently been called, and to mold them into something morally instructive, intellectually nourishing and socially uniting, rather than allowing them to be used in ways that are morally destructive, intellectually dishonest and socially divisive – partisan, in other words.

Alas, the delusions I draw attention to are perpetuated consciously and with ulterior motives at work. These ulterior motives can be exposed through historical research and by providing a context for those motives.

Stripped of demagoguery the facts present themselves.

What I term delusions are eight areas of American history where the topic of religion has been purposefully distorted and/or used for a particular end or goal which is very often political but sometimes profit-seeking. However, as the reader will quickly find out, these delusions come with deep costs to human dignity and welfare, and to the much-cherished American way of life.

Quotes over the Centuries

For many a day and year, even from our first beginnings hath this word of the Lord been verified concerning us in the Wilderness; The Lord hath said of New-England, Surely they are my People Children that will not lie, so hath he been our Saviour.

– William Stoughton, 1668

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

– Declaration of Independence, 1776

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude … shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

– Amendment XIII to the Constitution, ratified 1865

And we should … guard ourselves against falsifications of the faith by national religiosity, as against a falsification of national piety by Christian trimmings.

– Rudolph Bultmann in The

Task of Theology in the Present Situation, 2 May 1933,

three months after the burning of the Reichstag, Berlin;

thereafter Hitler would seize extensive political powers.

…the pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays, lesbians … the ACLU, People for the American Way … all of them who tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their faces and say you helped this happen. Robertson, I totally concur.¹

– Jerry Falwell on the 700 Club television program,

¹ https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video;_ylt=AwrTHQpDwWBaUnQAnHVXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTEzOWU0ZnFhBGNvbG8DZ3ExBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDVUkwMkM0XzEEc2VjA3Nj?p=transcript+700+Club+Sept+13%2C+2001&fr=tightropetb#id=1&vid=70a9562d308298542ba1e1de192b1cfc&action=view (accessed January 2019).

Introduction

de∙lu∙sion n. 1. The act of deluding. 2. The state of being deluded or led astray. 3. A false belief especially when persistent. 4. Psychiatry A false, fixed belief, held in spite of evidence to the contrary.

– Funk and Wagnalls Standard College Dictionary

The topic of religious delusions in American public life emerged as the result of the past ten years’ worth of effort attempting to decipher what I found to be a shocking and troubling truth: that is, the intentionally-obscured and distorted role of religion in national and world events, as told to us by educational systems, news media, and politicians .

Fully, it’s not only that religion is used as a tool to achieve some goal or other, which on one level makes a certain amount of obvious sense. Instead, fabrications are deliberately told in its name in order to deceive people as to what to believe about religion generally, or a particular religion, or about a particular religious group that may be in question or at the center of some affair or controversy.

Furthermore, the social consequences for populations holding religious delusions can range from benign (by being ignored and therefore un-influential), to bad (by inciting stereotypes and phobias about individuals or groups), to worse (by encouraging or extolling actions based in those stereotypes and phobias by means of discrimination, exclusion and persecution), and even to disastrous (by fomenting genocidal physical conflicts and wars).

In fact, it can be surprising, if not shocking, to learn the depths to which we, the public at large, have been manipulated. The result is a certain control over the popular imagination as it pertains to religious topics in American life, and therefore a measure of control over how we respond both individually and as a society to any given event or crisis. To be sure, this control will be seized-upon if the population is not wary.

In short, the thesis of this book is that we have been deliberately fed delusions about religion by the mass-mainstream and corporatized media at the behest of government officials and their policies (specific officials are relevant to particular cases and will be named in the respective chapters with no intent to accuse, but rather to seek explanations from those best-positioned to provide direct evidence or insight; the term government officials, after all, casts a very wide and meaningless net over a humungous bureaucracy).

As a result, Americans carry-about many more than one or two delusions regarding religion – these delusions are espoused both from within religions and from without – and these are what this book strives to address in eight topics which unfold in a roughly chronological narrative of historical-religious delusions championed since the founding of the nation. They are in this sense uniquely American delusions, but they are based upon patterns that have existed since the organization of societies and civilizations. A word about such precedents will be made, but only after a brief remark about the nature of the genesis of the inquiry itself.

The CONSTRUCTION of a DELUSION

With the onset of September 11, 2001 attacks, like so many souls, I was held captive to the unfolding of events live, in real-time, as the morning progressed from one tragic scene to another. It was an exercise in the shock and awe of the entire viewing audience. The images were arresting: two huge buildings with smoking-gaping holes where the aircrafts entered, the hapless people falling and/or jumping from the towers, and ultimately the two World Trade Center towers exploding into dust and debris across lower Manhattan. The balance of the day was a series of dizzying events culminating in the President’s speech from the Oval Office later in the evening at 8pm Eastern time … 5pm in Arizona, where I reside.

The rest is history, as they say.

But on that evening of the attack, the President, having been away from Washington, D.C. much of the day, had arrived back at the Oval Office to address the nation. And he had an explanation for what happened:

America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world and no one will keep that light from shining. Today our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature, and we responded with the best of America…

In essence, we were told the attackers hated America for freedoms enjoyed here that they found offensive to their religious beliefs. To be sure, the attackers’ beliefs are representative of only a fraction of their co-religionists as theirs is merely an interpretation of religion embedded within a much larger religion with a worldwide following, Islam. This interpretation would come to be more precisely known as jihadi Islam, radical Islamic extremism or Islamism in academic circles. The meaning of the President’s message, however, was that the attack was motivated by a belief about what we are, ostensibly not for what we had done.¹

The President’s statement seemed disingenuous to me, even at that time, and I was vaguely suspicious. He seemed to ascribe the cause or motive to religious fanaticism, and only secondarily was Americans’ behavior (the practice of our freedoms) wrongly identified as the issue. This seemed something of a cover-story and came as a surprise to me that the audience would be misled in this way.

There ought to be nothing domestically-politically wrong, I thought at the time, with admitting some genuine disagreements and interactions with others in foreign lands that may cause backlash. The American people are capable of understanding cause-and-effect in the conflicts of national and regional interests around the world. We realize the USA is a large country with complicated and far-reaching interests and influences; this is bound to create resentment in certain quarters. This honesty would be appreciated by the public.

But instead, the demagoguery began, and was ratcheted-up to a fever pitch, a war-generating pitch, for which the costs endure.²

With these words of the President, the façade of religion as cause rang hollow as I strived to comprehend the day at hand and the terror that was befalling the country.

Worse still, his words were in direct contradiction from what was previously known to be true from statements made by Osama bin Laden (Lawrence, xx: 58-62). While he certainly did have grievances against the USA and had stated them clearly, and even though American freedoms and the lifestyle perpetuated here and in Hollywood movies were among his criticisms, these were not what he cited when he gave his speeches and reasons to attack American interests. Bin Laden was most explicit in his rationale for injuring Americans, and it was essentially threefold:

1) U.S. support for corrupt and oppressive regimes such as the Saudi monarchy or any number of Arab governments including Saddam Hussein whom the U.S. had once supported (1980-1988) only to then turn-on him later in the game (1990-91). In other words, U.S. involvement and interference in Arab-Muslim countries were unacceptable to bin Laden as it caused untold misery and suffering to his fellow Muslims who were victimized by their oppressive puppet regimes and the vagaries of U.S. foreign policy.

2) The U.S. implementation of a no-fly zone over parts of Iraq and the continued presence of U.S. troops within Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of the first Gulf War in late 1990 to early 1991. Bin Laden blamed these sanctions for the deaths of over a million Iraqis over the span of a decade. The land of the two holy shrines of Islam was, furthermore, and in his religious opinion, being subjected to infidels so long as American (presumably Christian and most certainly non-Muslim) troops remained in Arabia.

And finally,

3) U.S. support for the state of Israel and Zionism over-and-above the human rights of Palestinians. The historically strong support the U.S. has given Israel over its nearly-seventy years of existence has resulted in an ever increasingly desperate set of circumstances for the Palestinians who are preponderantly Muslim.

These three reasons would be repeated after 9/11 by bin Laden (Lawrence, 117) yet remain obscure to the vast majority of Americans who never had it thoroughly and honestly explained to them the full mindset of the accused attackers.

But alas, this distortion about their motives turned out to be one of the more benign elements of the deception – distracting to be sure, but not wholly sinister. To mislead to protect genuine interests, or even incompetence or negligence, or foreign policies that have not been fully disclosed yet but are being implemented, are wholly understandable motives, even if unjustified. I personally chalked-it-up to our dependence upon oil³ and the subsequent need for cover reasons to maintain some type of military presence in the region – hardly a conspiracy theory.

However, rendering us victims rather than targets of retribution for wrongdoing would possess greater political capital for an offensive military response. And ultimately, that’s precisely what happened. The U.S. was mobilized for a war that, nearly two decades on at the time of this writing, it has still to fully extricate itself from. There is no clear end in sight for a U.S. presence there, despite what we are told by officials about our military deployment, namely that it has ended, and we are there simply in an advisory role. In fact, our involvement in the Middle East continues to evolve in complexity as recent U.S. relations with Pakistan and Iran (and most recently Syria) show increasing signs of pressure and tension.

This huge gulf between the knowledge and perceptions of the American people on the one hand, and the stated grievances of bin Laden on the other, was masterfully exploited by the political-media apparatus in the US, even internationally, and the groundwork for a war on terror was established, and with the war being swiftly implemented within a month on 7 October 2001.

These are no small consequences.

What is most significant about the maintenance of this gulf in knowledge is that the American people cannot be expected to change what we are as a culture and a people, and so we need look no farther than these claims nor take any remedial actions – the reasoning goes – because it was not what we had done that was the attackers’ grievance, but who we are. This gulf in knowledge undermines all self-examination, reevaluation, and negotiation in their tracks. Much in the same way the myth of the lone gunman (see the Terms of Delusion after the Conclusion) puts to rest any need for further inquiry – any need for questioning the involvement of others, or to look for motives beyond a single individual. This is a very convenient and efficient veil to hide behind for those either directly involved in the crime or in the subsequent cover-up.

However, should the cause be rooted in something we have done, then we may be able to easily (or perhaps not-so-easily) undo it; or, going forward, we can pledge to stop doing what we’ve been doing. We would at least have the opportunity to ask ourselves such questions as part of a national (and rational) self-reflection on events. In other words, the American people may demand that a political solution be sought in order to address the grievances of bin Laden, rather than embark upon a war of questionable necessity and outcome. Instead a delusion was peddled, and the American political system was activated.

But first, these delusions must be forensically and accurately understood, exposed, and swept-aside before any such process of self-reflection can begin, and certainly before any political rectifications be crafted as these same delusions have done enormous damage to the American political psyche (see Postscript to chapter eight). This outcome is advanced in no small part by the 9/11 terror event. Getting to the heart of that event was the first step and, as it turned-out, the last chapter of this book. Indeed, it was because upon closer scrutiny the very attack itself was not what it seemed to be. There was, it now appeared, a far more active role on the part of certain U.S. officials complicit in the operation itself, and who were not merely spinning a tale as to causes but concealing their own direct involvement in the perpetuation of the event.

This was the point (by now it was 2007) at which my understanding was taking a turn and where I became convinced that delusions can be disastrous, not simply bad or worse, as suggested at the outset. What’s more, the evidence is straight forward and unimpeachable if one has adequate access to the information and images. The Soliloquy inserted between chapters six and seven presents this evidence and my investigative approach dealing with this evidence. As the reader will see (stress the see), the obfuscating of motives and causes became most benign in the light of evidence of direct U.S. participation in the murder of American citizens on American soil.⁴

At this juncture it came into focus that a delusion had been deliberately constructed (and played-out on live TV) and implanted in a traumatized and bewildered nation. The political capital was enormous.

In time, the terrorist attack of 9/11 exposed itself as the latest example of a nation-state performing a false flag military operation, and the awareness of a religious delusion being perpetuated in its name (Muslims were blamed after all), coupled with an emerging understanding of a shadowed history in the first place, this study was set in motion. Though 9/11 was the topic that first broke through my oversight and provided an awareness of this pattern in history, it would not be the only incident of this nature to challenge long–held assumptions. Beginning with this shadowed element of the 9/11 attack, a line of inquiry would open up that resulted in a new, for me at least, understanding of religion’s roles in American history, and it includes a very unpleasant history indeed. It is a history in which religious deception is an instrument of power.

A NEED for DECEPTION?

⁵

We can all appreciate the need for secrecy, even deception. Anyone who is a parent certainly understands the concept. One can’t tell the children everything too soon, and sometimes white lies are necessary to bide one’s time, and in the case of a child it requires time in order for it to grow-up and mature before processing certain information of an adult nature. This is hardly deception; it is common sense.

Perhaps nations are similar, and I intend to demonstrate that at least some people think that national populations are candidates for this kind of deception.

What if nations, too, like children, require time to mature in outlook and cohesion before they can stand the pummels of history – factionalism, racism, religious tumult, and war among them? Therefore, it’s not uncommon to hear citizens claim that higher-ups know things that we don’t, and probably we shouldn’t, so a degree of deception is tolerated and even expected.

However, a common assumption accompanying such claims is that, though deception may be a necessary ingredient in public administration, our leaders would not conspire. But what is meant by conspire is that no one in that decision-making apparatus would harm the American public directly, or conspire (against us, the general population) for profit, or lie to start a war, etc. These are dismissed as conspiracy theories, a term that’s use warrants some critical examination. And conspiracy theories, we are led to believe, are prima facie false.

The idea, therefore, that political leaders would use religion as a cover in order to accomplish some specified goal goes back even further than the notorious example of the much-despised Roman leader Nero (54-68 AD/CE). In his case, the emperor, rumor stated (accurately or not), had himself organized to have a fire set in the city of Rome. He would subsequently blame the Christians who were living in Rome at that time and Nero set about to persecute them, going so far as to set some Christians on fire while still alive! A wretched act of terror indeed. This was both nefarious and duplicitous – compounded by the cunning ingenuity that he was able to accomplish two goals: secure the land for his expanded palace grounds; and he was able to quell a hated social group whom he believed, rightly or wrongly, had potential to cause him governance problems by siphoning-off allegiance to his rule. None among his motives is hidden.

But what is nearly equally horrifying was the response to Nero’s activities by Tacitus and recounted by Henry Chadwick in his book The Early Church:

There seemed no necessary reason the Christians should not also achieve toleration. They came into conflict with the State in the first instance by accident, not on any fundamental point of principle. In 64 a great fire destroyed much of Rome. Nero had made himself sufficiently unpopular to be suspected of arson, and turned to the Christians to find a scapegoat. The historian Tacitus, writing about fifty years later, did not believe that the Christians were justly accused of the arson, though he saw no harm in the execution of a contemptible, anti-social group hated for their vices – for by his time, if not by Nero’s, the Christians were vulgarly thought to practice incest and cannibalism at their nocturnal meetings. (These charges probably arose from language about universal love and the eucharist.) The Neronian persecution was confined to Rome and was not due to any sense of deep ideological conflict between Church and State; it was simply that the emperor had to blame somebody for the fire (25-26).

The utility of religion is much broader than the above example reveals but it does make us keenly, if painfully, aware of the potentially exploitable nature of religious groups. That’s probably why leaders find it such an easy instrument for their deceptions, and why I felt the desire to write this research narrative upon understanding 9/11 in such a light.

A religious delusion told in the name of the 9/11 attack was personally unbearable. I could see no benign element to it. No possible need in America’s interest (including oil) that could justify such an atrocity compounded by a huge, indeed global, lie leading ultimately to a second war (first Afghanistan then Iraq) and an increasing number of atrocities in the form of terrible human pain and suffering directly resulting from the wars.

What I can and will accept criticism for, is naïveté; though I doubt much naïveté applies in what you are about to read here. And the question may be fairly asked: Could there really be factual information that would warrant the need for a 9/11-style operation? We are coming upon twenty years after the event now and it seems unlikely that it could ever be justified, and as this book argues academically and politically, the 9/11 delusion is an example of one of the more damaging deceptions foisted upon an unsuspecting society. It is a lie that is damaging for the many, and in the interests of only the few, and with the costs being far greater than the benefits. Furthermore, it is a lie that cannot be justified when brought into the full light of examination.

But whatever the existential answer as to why the domestic perpetrators of 9/11 believed it was in the country’s interest to orchestrate the attack, it appears that such deceits are not uncommon and perhaps it is an axiom of governance: societies are routinely and systematically lied to by their ruling elites.

In light of such reasons (rationalizations) the reader can evaluate on a case-by-case basis as to the justifiability of the delusions and determine for him or herself just how grievous each incident is. There is no reason to believe we would each of us find these religious delusions equally unjustifiable. Quite the contrary, there are, evidently, individuals who believe there is a need for such actions based upon delusions (since the latter cannot exist without the former – delusions require deluders).

Further, delusions are done at some risk and cost to those perpetuating them – especially when they are of the criminal sort. Concealment and working from the shadows are the norm and the principal modus operandi of those involved in these deceptions. Short of outside and independent scrutiny into the deeper workings of these events there is unlikely any mechanism by which to bring forth these evidences into the full light of day. The political system currently seems unable to combat these delusions using the traditional means of leverage: the Congress and its power to commission investigations. But this is another effort.

For purposes of the thesis presented here, it is sufficient to understand that there is nothing new under the sun and that delusions are routinely perpetuated in the name of religion for some end or other. What we all innately recognize, however, is that delusions undertaken in the name of religion pose a unique philosophical conundrum. What is supposed to be a tool used for honesty and noble purposes suddenly becomes a tool for intentions most people would deem ignoble – wealth extension, war for expansion, wasteful use of resources resulting in the neglect and social deprivation of segments of society, or even worse, the murdering of innocents.

But by whom are these decisions calculated? Those in power are the only ones capable of executing these social-engineering projects, which is ultimately what such efforts are tantamount to – steering society in the direction of their goals and ends.

This is the dilemma: who is to decide when deception is necessary? Who is to decide what is good and what is evil? Here is where morality becomes relative, if not conveniently then out of necessity, for the ruling powers. The survival of the group may depend upon it, we are frequently told, most assuredly, the established political order may be under threat. This then becomes the basis for political action.

Friedrich Nietzsche warns that the origins of good and evil are rooted in the ruling elites’ determination of the very definitions of the terms good and evil and that there is a pathos of distance required⁶ between themselves (the political elites) and the masses – words of wisdom, to be sure. Invariably, those defining and applying the terms ascribe to themselves the good/holy and to the other the bad/evil.

Our day proves to be no different.

Upon closer examination of the religious language used against us in these delusions, it becomes clear that it is little more than elitists’ rationalizations of their lordship over the rest of us. All too often the discourse develops a language that is laden with metaphysical self-justifications of our innocence – again, hated for what we are, not what we’ve done.

But this trick is as old as the Bible itself and was the example I had in mind when stating that such notions go back long before Nero’s deviousness.

Indeed, as the Biblical narrators recount, God would take it upon himself to deceive the opposing armies of Israel by making it appear, as in a mirage, that the numbers of Israelite soldiers were far more numerous than they in fact were. Similarly, in the case of the four desperate lepers who made a Syrian army contingent think they were being accosted by Hittite and Egyptian kings and their armies hired by the Israelite king (2 Kings 7: 3-7). The Syrians were deceived by God so that the starving inhabitants outside of the city walls could enjoy the spoils of the just-fled Syrian army and then later trample the Israelite king at his own city gates thereby fulfilling prophecy.

The Hebrew Bible’s narrative is replete with incidents in which God performs morally questionable acts in order to make some argument to the people of Israel, or to its enemies. In other words, it is an Israel-centric (nationalistic) text with the Hebrew nation-state at the epicenter of God’s concerns. As such, it is morally justifiable to demonize (lie about or lie to) a foreign people in order to rationalize attacking or usurping them in some way, typically in a land conquest. Again, a Biblical reference which almost seems a caricature; in the process of demonizing the enemy tribes of Israel, the Hebrew Bible portrays them as offering their sons to Baal in burnt offerings (Jeremiah 19:5). Or against the Amalekites, God commanded Samuel to tell King Saul to destroy all they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey (1 Samuel 15:3, Amplified Bible).

In other words, God did what he felt necessary, including deceiving and brutalizing. Lying to the opponents of Israel or to Israel themselves is simply a means to an end. God would find no moral quandaries in destroying the enemies of His chosen people and using metaphysical deception as his chief weapon.

Alas, since the gods are crafty in their worldly ways, so too must be rulers of men. All is fair in love and war, after all, so the saying goes anyway. And it appears that the nations’ leaders do in fact indulge in these rationalizations.

As a matter of policy, the judicious use of public religion could be in the best interest of the nation and was used to great effect by the founders of the early American Republic. All men are created equal, or nearly all men at that time. Similarly, the notion often fostered in churches across the land that the founding fathers desired to establish a Christian nation based on the morality of the Ten Commandments, when in fact Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson repudiated the very idea of Jesus as a God-man (referring to the Trinity and Christian orthodoxy more broadly), which was a belief they felt to be superstitious (supernaturalism) and a corruption of the ethical teachings of Jesus. In fact, Thomas Jefferson could arguably be considered an atheist⁷ in his personal and practical beliefs and a deist in his public statements. Their verbal assent to deism⁸ and approval of Christian ethics is an expression of their belief that there is a certain utilitarian and beneficial effect to religious adherence, namely good behavior and the maintenance of the social order necessary upon which to build the Republic.

But good behavior is hardly predicated solely upon a Christian metaphysic.

Franklin would ruminate that he expected to find decent and upstanding citizens in all sects (chapter one; Kramnick, 166-167). In their own ways, the attitudes of Franklin and Jefferson recognize that religion does motivate people’s behavior and the sensible use of religious rhetoric for civilized ends has its honorable place. In a free republic the benefits of religion become obvious and it would have been counterintuitive, if counterproductive, to dissuade all people from all manner of belief. This is the best way to understand certain of the early Republic’s legislators’ willingness to allow state money to be used to support church activity and ministers’ salaries in the overall attempts to reinforce Christian morality (chapter one; Sehat, 36).

We would hardly deem it appropriate today, however, to spend public money in an effort to Christianize Americans’ morality in order to correct the morals of men, restrain their vices and preserve the peace of society (Sehat, 34).

Or would we?

Certainly, many people today feel this is a most appropriate, if not a necessary, role of government, whether through tax-breaks for religious institutions or by the legislative blocking of public funding or civil sanction for abortion or gay marriage, to name two high-profile topics.

The overall goals may be lofty and the ends desirable – to have a just and peaceful society for all – but the road to get there and the means by which to do so are not so clear and must remain compatible with modern concepts of religious pluralism, as stipulated by the Constitution’s First Amendment.⁹ Nevertheless, in the late 1700s most Anglos felt that Christian-based morality ought to be the guiding principle of the nation – perhaps with a relaxed enforcement protocol as to creed, but the general outlines of social behavior were certainly predicated on a good book mentality. To deny this religious aspect of social development in American political thought is to overlook an important element (and safeguard) of the US’s constitutional history.

But let us not romanticize this history either, or worse, allow this historic act by the founders to be interpreted as a signal of state-endorsed religion. It was anything but. Instead, it was a means to an end: managing civil society.

Today we find any number of means (resources) by which to bring about our civil society, most are declarative and straight-forward – rooted in known laws, philosophies and documents. Some means, however, are far more shadowy in their genesis and execution. However society chooses to move – or is moved – forward, the resources of the U.S. federal bureaucracy ranging across its governmental-military-economic spheres are enormous and provide innumerable opportunities for power-grabbing individuals and entities. The thesis of this book is to peer behind the veneer of religion which has veiled the activities of certain of those power-grabbing individuals/entities.

More conspicuously, take these two examples of religious motivations deeply influencing politics, yet are political polar opposites: Liberation Theology on the one hand and the Moral Majority on the other; both represent instances of religious leaders speaking a very political message and trying to achieve some desired political end. Political parties align themselves with one or the other and do so publicly. In these cases, religion is used openly, and both are fair enough examples of religion’s efficacy in the social sphere. There’s little-to-nothing covert about them, as means of influencing public policy. As citizens we can accept or reject them and/or their respective messages. But such efforts cannot be dismissed as devious; they are the actions of religious people, or lived religion, as anthropologists like to say these days.

These more-or-less upfront and forthright uses of religion, that is saying and doing whatever it takes to see that one’s views prevail, is the basic theme of chapters one through four. The theme of chapters five through eight, on the other hand, take the use of religion a step further. In these chapters, religion’s usefulness takes on a more complex, shadowy and far sinister role. Religion is used to deceive. In these chapters, religion assists in accomplishing anything but noble ends. Deception becomes the norm. Only by seeing the ways in which we’ve been deceived can we peer behind the veil. Hence, the importance of viewing suppressed images.

In fact, one option for the reader is to begin at the Soliloquy inserted between chapters six and seven, and then proceed to read chapters seven and eight. If these chapters and the understanding of religion’s role in those two events (the Branch Davidian confrontation at Waco in 1993 and the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001) don’t bring into sharp, if shocking, focus the political issues raised by our leaders’ use of religion against us, then I’m extremely pessimistic for the future political consequences of the role(s) of religion in society.

A WORD ABOUT the WORD CONSPIRACY

Very frustrating due to its intellectual dishonesty is the polemic use of the term conspiracy theory so widely used in official discourse, that is, in political discourse, media reports, and most woefully and regrettably, in academe. The selective use of this term does nothing but belie the propagandist nature of what we are being told, and, consequently, what they are up to . Whether it is a comprehensively-concerted effort is not the point, nor is it necessary, for a desired effect to be achieved. In fact, having unwitting accomplices in the perpetuating of misnomers like conspiracy or conspiracy theory is all the better. They willingly and dutifully provide a degree of separation for, and therefore plausible deniability to, those with more active roles and the most to gain from this carefully-crafted and thoroughly deceptive use of the term.

I confess to having been one of these unwitting accomplices thinking of the many times I stood in front of a classroom of students advocating for the conventional understanding of events, and using the term conspiracy theory consistent with that understanding. I no less share the responsibility of misappropriating causes, albeit done unwittingly. There is, it is my contention, greater accountability in the field Religious Studies given that religion is so deeply and thoroughly woven into the official version of events. Given this, if it is not the professional Religious Studies instructor’s job to correct the historical distortion of the field, distortions implicating decisively (allegedly) religious actions, then who is to do it? Other academic disciplines¹⁰ have their own responsibilities that may overlap, but it seems principally a Religious Studies task.

There is any number of interests (religious, political, and profiteering opportunists come to mind) who would willingly fill the void left by a distorted understanding, which leads to the next academic issue of concern to this thesis: the highly politically-charged nature of the discourse surrounding the uses of the term conspiracy theory/theories. This biased use in current American political dialogue is so anti-intellectual as to be little more than transparent propaganda that warrants critical examination¹¹, and should be exposed as such everywhere else, most especially the media. I have included a Terms of Delusion section to illustrate how words are used against an unsuspecting population.

Americans are subjected to propaganda under the guise of news. And it is done blatantly. Most obviously, and in what conceivable definition of the word conspiracy, is the federal government’s own version of events contained in the 9/11 Commission Report (9/11CR) not a conspiracy theory? This is demagoguery, pure and simple. There is no academic or newsworthy usefulness to the term conspiracy used in this context.

Conspiracy, by law, means that individuals agree and collude to break the law in order to profit or gain in some way, or worse. The charge of conspiracy is routinely made in legal cases and the selective designation of "conspiracy