RR-ESM. An introduction

1. A Course in Miracles Overview
2. Your Will and God’s Will are the same
3. The difference between Course and Christianity
4. Original Sin, Christianity’s most destructive teaching
5. Why Christ was really crucified
6. My analysis of the ego
7. An overview of the world we live in
8. The American economy
9. About marriage and relationships
10. The pickle jar
11. Drugs and alcohol and why people use them
12. Vegetarianism, the wave of the future
13. David Hawkins. Truth vs. Falsehood
14. Exorcism, a relic from the dark ages
15. Race and racism
16. The culture of death.
    • War
    • Abortion
    • Capital Punishment
17. Life before and after death
18. Our living companions on this planet and the difference between them and us
19. The possibility of life in outer space and what if anything it means to us
20. Three explanations for the way things are
21. The value of the workbook and memorizing text
22. E-mail and FAQs
23. Donations
24. In Conclusion
25. Videos
    
26. Spiritual Revelation
    

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24. In conclusion

It’s been said, “The Lord works in mysterious ways.” But once you read and understand the sentence in A Course in Miracles, which says, “This is the world of time, where all things end,” it’s not really mysterious at all.

What is mysterious is the way the human mind works, and even today we do not understand much about it. That’s why we owe a debt of gratitude to Helen Schucman for listening to the Voice for seven years and giving us A Course in Miracles. In other times and places she would have been   burned at the stake as a witch. Even today fundamentalist Christianity claims A Course in Miracles is the voice of the devil, or a demon. I accept Course as what it is, a well-written guide to lead modern people into a better world. As to whether it was the voice of Jesus, or Helen Schucmans own work, I have no way of verifying either one of those theories.

Having said that here’s what A Course in Miracles is.

A Course in Miracles is a gentle introduction to Atheism. Here are the reasons.

1. Helen Schucman and William Thetford were Atheists.

2. A Course in Miracles says God exists, but He doesn’t control what happens in the world, and more importantly He didn’t create it.

3. Therefore prayer doesn’t work. I’m going to share an   insight from a friend of mine, whom I will refer to as “The Orange County Atheist.” We were watching the hurricane Katrina disaster on television and everyone was praying. My buddy, OCA, laughed out loud. “I don’t think that’s funny at all,” I said. “We’re looking at a horrible tragedy on national T.V. and you think that’s funny.” “Hey man, lighten up a little,” he said. “It’s just those people are wasting their time praying. Unless their prayers are for rain they aren’t being answered.” Later on after I studied Course for a while and became an ESM I thought about what he said. And I came to the conclusion he was right. Consider the following. Many parts of the world undergo droughts every year. They pray for rain and it never comes. Other parts of the world undergo severe flooding. They pray for the sky to clear and the rain to go away, and they just receive more rain. Countless people throughout the world pray for world peace, and we have endless wars. Thousands of people starve to death in the third world everyday, praying for food that never comes. Here in America, the land of opportunity, we often pray before our weekly rituals of senseless brutality, called football. We pray that the gladiators who participate aren’t seriously injured, and then when they are seriously injured we thank God they weren’t killed. I could write a lot more about this but I won’t, because here’s the bottom line. Before we make any serious progress in the betterment of the human race we have to get over the idea there is an external power that will help us with our problems. If our problems are to be solved we have to solve them ourselves. Although religion will have its part the vast majority will be done through science, engineering, technology, and education.

4. I said prayer doesn’t work, but it’s not needed. Here’s why it’s not needed. This is the world of time, where all things end, and no amount of prayer is going to change that. But as children of God we are Eternal Spiritual Beings, and no prayer or any other kind of useless ritual is needed. As children of God we have everything we need for all eternity.

5. Traditional Christianity and the other religions of the world have no credibility as far as giving us a better life. For instance consider that all of our service academies have chapels where the gladiators in training go to service every week and any other time they feel like praying. Now I’m not one of these peace freaks or anything. In fact I think war is just what we do and I’m all for being the best that you can be if you engage in it. But otherwise give me a break about the religion part. I can’t imagine God cares who wins our endless wars, unless He’s a gambler and places bets with some celestial bookmaker. That’s traditional Christianity. The religions of the third world are even worse. In the end everyone killed in war is killed in the name of God. Basically those Gods whose name people are killed in are all the same. They are not real. They are the Gods of mans ego, the ones we made up from all of our legends and fairy tales from the past, from primitive times and primitive people. So if religion is useless as far as giving us a better life what will work?

6. Let’s examine Atheism, since I said Course was a gentle introduction to it. Atheism has been defined as the lack of a belief in the existence of God. That definition comes from the book Atheism The Case against God, by George H. Smith. Now here’s the thing about Atheism. I’ve read a lot of books on the subject. I understand it relatively well. But it doesn’t inspire me, and it’s dull reading. I think it would work as a belief system if everyone in the world practiced it. Contrary to what everyone thinks Atheists are not immoral dishonest people, who only care about themselves. The serious Atheists whose works I’ve read care very much about providing value and production for society. The big problem with Atheism is that people get it confused with Hedonism. In fact the two do not go together at all.

That being the case why wouldn’t Atheism work as a belief system? It wouldn’t work simply because 98% or more of us have some kind of innate need, or drive to believe in a Higher Power. The people who call themselves Atheists are probably no more than 2% of the population, at best. When you start talking about people like George Smith and Richard Dawkins you’re talking about a small fraction of 1% of the population, the Michael Jordan of the intellectual world types. Most of these people are reclusive type personalities, and even if they wanted to run for political office and fix things the masses would not elect them because they are Atheists.

So how would Course combined with Atheism lead us into a better world? Here’s what I believe could be done. People such as David Hawkins, Richard Dawkins, and many other intellectual types could become acquainted and exchange ideas. For instance I think the idea there are no valid external powers but yet God exists as an eternal Spiritual entity in all of us could be merged, and two different groups with two different belief systems could work comfortably with each other to solve the worlds problems. They wouldn’t have to believe competing ideas to work on important world issues.

To be honest there is one big problem with my idea that the worlds greatest minds should work together to solve the worlds problems, and I’m not optimistic this problem could be overcome. The problems this world faces will have to be overcome despite massive indifference by the general population and our politicians, who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. There is also a great deal of hostility towards the intellectual class, and in fact if you’ve been around long enough you have probably noted that sometimes people in general and especially politicians take pride in being ignorant. A case in point was Spiro Agnew’s attack on the “pointy headed intellectuals.” If religion and Christianity is of little use in solving the world’s problems the political system is worse than useless.

7. In closing I will say my biggest hope in producing this website is it will act as a catalyst to start the process of our becoming a better world. For instance I’ve referred to war as just something we do throughout this website. By now you probably think I’m just a cynical person with no real ideas for how to end war or help with any of our other problems so what good am I? Well, I do actually know how to end all wars and killing. Here’s how. We just stop producing weapons and stop killing each other. Wasn’t that easy? A centuries old problem solved just like that. Now I can hear the reactions. That’s absurd, you say. It can’t be done. To which I say, it has to be done. Otherwise we will become extinct in about 175 years, about 150 after the Polar Bears perish.

8. Anyone who doubts that the human race is facing extinction should click on the following hyperlink.

http://www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock.swf

This is a fascinating website. You can examine this clock and watch the human race destroying the earth and overpopulating the planet before your very eyes.

We can also start more Course study groups. That one thing more than anything else might do the most to make our planet a better place for all of Gods creatures to live.

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