Back Matter "Defending my Ideas on Religion" by Robert Villegas

The Description of this book on Amazon reads:

One of the features of my writing is my discovery of the strategy of moral triangulation which I exposed in one of my first books entitled "Behind the Ritual Mask". In this book I identified the three categories of religious thought and showed how they work together to imprison the human mind and make it prostrate to the pronouncements of "God". The three categories consist of? 1) the power of the chorus (collectivism), 2) the power of human sacrifice (the suffering savior), and 3) the power of the good/evil trap (which is made up of intrinsic good and evil). 

These three categories work together to weaken the human mind, and through guilt and propaganda (lies) attempt to control the lives of men. The chorus works like the voice of other people and seeks to engender fear of the ideas and moral pronouncements of the group. It establishes a metaphysic of indeterminacy which says others are more important and you are to be the willing subject of the majority. The chorus sings of the glory of human sacrifice and exhorts man, the sinner, to give up any values he might possess (mind, body, actions) for the sake of the chorus (others). Finally, the good/evil paradigm locks man into the prison by defining what is good and evil in the universe, making anything that proceeds from the mind of God, religion, to be the good and anything that proceeds from the mind of man to be prideful and evil. This "authority" granted to religious minds is based upon numerous false anti-concepts that are intended to replace valid moral concepts with a twisted form of mystical knowledge that presumes to be the only representative of the good. I challenge all three categories and have done so consistently in my writings on religion.

This moral trap of religion is an evil potion that destroys the individual. It is people who advocate these three false premises who would be asked to judge my books through peer review, and who would judge my mind as inadequate and evil because I don't hold to the premises of moral triangulation. Since I adhere to reality, existence, rational consciousness, reason, science, logic, and self-interested morality, how can an AI "mind" determine that my views are not to be considered because they are not divinity school-trained? 

The goal of my writing on religion is to demystify religion and help people recover their minds by helping them question what has heretofore been considered unquestionable; and to see that questioning the tenets of mysticism, spiritism, and the mystification of history can liberate their minds and help them see how valuable they are when they are not mired in Original Sin, fear of God, fear of moral dictatorship, fear of self-interest, and fear of life. I want to help people understand that their lives do not have to be wasted by the dread of sacrificing their minds; that the nightmares engendered by a false revelation and mere “scripture” should not be haunting their dreams, that their values and their very souls belong to them to enjoy, that love is love of real values not love of empty spirits, miracles and fantastical lies.

In this book I also argue against the AI claim that my books have not been peer reviewed and that I do not have credible standing in the university. To this I respond in this book:

"The idea that I need the peer review of Christian scholars is false. Since presumably these people are endowed by God with perfect knowledge this argues strongly against my views because I declare that there is no perfect knowledge on this basis. How could these scholars ever be authorities on anything?"

Also: " What we have here is the mentality of a mystic that knows nothing, does nothing, and can only live vicariously through the minds and thoughts of people they have manipulated into the position of providing their sustenance. These are the people whose jobs it is to “peer review” the minds of others and to block human success and knowledge at every turn. 

"To these religious advocates, God has perfect knowledge. If he didn’t have perfect knowledge then he would not be God, they think; he could not have created the entire edifice of nature. In fact, God is reputed to know the past, the present, and the future. He knows all facts that man does not know. His power and knowledge are perfect while man can only know something if God decides to impart it to him.

"We are told that God contacts certain individuals through fulfilling prayers, through the scriptures, through revelation, and even through direct interactions (as with Paul). In Catholicism, God even designates an individual to receive all of his knowledge; God makes this individual infallible. Other religions declare that their particular leader is in direct contact with God at all times, that he or she talks to God and receives knowledge and instruction from Him.

"Yet, if we look at history, we see that God’s representatives are hardly perfect men. They are not sinless and they engage in massive destructive political acts; they even start wars. They declare that the Pope is the Vicar of God and that God sometimes instructs the Pope to raise huge armies and engage in murderous wars, torture men, and punish them for claiming to have knowledge outside the context of God’s power. Why would I need their peer judgments when they are not my peers, nor are they my superiors?

"If God is perfect, wouldn’t he have complete knowledge of existence? Wouldn’t he be able to give scientific knowledge to man that would enable his chosen vicars to live free of disease? We must ask, why God does not even impart perfect knowledge to his entire following? If God is all powerful, all creative, all knowledgeable, why are his representatives not receiving full, perfect knowledge in his universities where they spend numerous years ingesting God’s truth? Instead, their levels of knowledge seem to correspond to a general level of knowledge that comes from other people, much of which is nonsense. 

"If God has perfect knowledge of past, present, and future, why don’t his believers (who pray to him and talk to him) also have perfect knowledge of past, present, future? In truth, it is not possible for any man to have perfect knowledge because knowledge comes from a focus on reality and not a focus on a spirit. If we find it hard to believe that ghosts are real, why do we accept the notion that there is a spirit that understands existence? These facts argue against the notion that there is a spirit with perfect knowledge. It is in the nature of existence that man must use his senses to ascertain reality, that the process of using one’s cognitive tools, his senses, take place over time and that it is man who gains knowledge on an ascending scale relative to the particular time. Knowledge can not come from a spirit. To assume that it does is cognitively untenable."

I submit that it is minds like this, who operate and think on the basis of a magical being who rules the universe, who engages in miracles, prayer, and knowledge (communicated to man by ESP or some such nonsense) imparted by an imperfect being, who would be charged with the task of judging my ideas on a peer reviewed basis. These are unscientific men and women who spend their lives in ivory towers, or ivory cloisters. Their "scholarship" would consist of their knowledge imparted to them second and third hand from men who have no connection whatsoever to the spiritual world or even in the real world in which I function. In fact, people should be coming to me to peer review their books which I would not do because fewer people read their books than read mine.

"This book is about love for the mind of man. It is my conviction that, finally, the mind of man should be defended, loved, and preserved. Any appeal that asks the mind to accept ideas without proof is an insult that leads to loss and ignorance. It is not my goal to insult people for their views but to appeal to their better minds, minds that demand proof and clear thinking. My efforts to elevate science, logic, proof, and scholarship are intended to elevate human certainty." - Robert Villegas, "Defending my Ideas on Religion" 

I also respond here that my only responsibility in my writing is to write honestly and to the best of my ability. My goal is not to obtain approval from apologists for religion especially from those who believe in a spirit and all that comes with it, miracles, revelation, the demands for prayer, etc. These so-called scholars are mere propagandists for religious premises. They are the popularizers of lies. There is no scholarly precision in their regurgitations of ideas that are thousands of years old. Those people are my enemies who only want to ensure that no one sees my ideas on religion. There is no way that any of these so-called "scholars" want to see their life's work rebutted and refuted. The onus of proof about the veracity of religion is on them and not on me.

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