Darrel Ray Quotes

People develop a conscience with or without religion. Our culture teaches murder and cheating are wrong; we don't need religion to know this.
Guilt comes from a different place in our mental experience, a place that is independent of general cultural training and directly related to religious indoctrination. That is why two people may feel guilt about different things while being equally convinced that cheating and murder are wrong.

The more a religion makes a person feel guilty and insecure, the harder the person works for the religion.

When Islam swept out of the Arabian Peninsula, it became an invasive species to both the pagan and Christian areas it conquered. With it came the sexual practices of a very patriarchal, polygamist culture. While the religions it displaced were not particularly sex positive, Islamic sexual practices, on the whole, were uniformly sex negative.

Jealousy is the opposite of maintaining and growing in a relationship. Jealousy includes elements of fear, anger, suspicion, and control that have no place in a mature relationship.

We acquire both the language and religious concepts from our immediate culture – at the same time. A child cannot discriminate between useful survival information and the emotional and psychological manipulations of religion. Once infected, these ideas are deeply embedded and almost impossible to change.

Have you ever observed somebody go through a religious conversion? The person seems perfectly reasonable to you and has no particular concern for religion. Then a parent, friend or child dies or he gets a serious illness or is involved in a car accident. In just a matter of weeks, he seeks out and finds the answers to all of life's questions and starts studying and spouting all sorts of doctrine. During such a window of vulnerability, religion can commandeer a person's brain.

What did you know about sex before you started engaging in intercourse? That is rhe level of knowledge a priest has unless he is cheating with another man or woman, or both.

When you transgress or sin, you must return to your personal religion for forgiveness. Catholics do not confess their sins to Baptist ministers. Baptists don't ask forgiveness from Muslim clerics. You must seek forgiveness from the place where you learned about sin. It is as if the religion infects you with the disease and then gives you a fake cure.

In light of religious teachings on sex, unrestricted people often feel they are fundamentally flawed. They are sinful and rebellious against god for having strong urges that go against the church's teachings. If the religious belief is deep enough, a person will not be able to look at his behavior rationally. The result can be a destructive cycle beginning with some religiously prohibited sexual behavior followed by repentance and prayer for a few weeks. Soon biological urges surface again, and he goes back to the behavior, followed by repentance once more. The process keeps him focused on guilt, not on rational ways to enjoy and express sexuality. Every time he goes through the cycle, it makes him feel less worthwhile. At the same time, the only way he can get relief is by going back to his religion.

Islam has some of the best defenses against other god viruses and has the potential to be more parasitically aggressive when consolidating political power with a society.

[U]sing religion to treat depression often makes the problem worse. It's like treating the disease with more of the disease. It is effective in getting people to give time and money to the church, but it does not help the victim.

Deprivation or overstimulation, combined with fear and peer pressure, are the conversion tools of many religions. A loud Pentecostal service, an Evangelical revival, a fear-mongering sermon by an imam or a dark campfire service during a week of church camp are all designed to overwhelm the senses, confuse the mind and alter perceptions of reality.

Religious persons are generally very interested in sex just like any normal person - and have an imagination and the energy for it. When constrained by the guilt cycle, however, they keep it under wraps. When guilt is temporarily removed, they can go to the other extreme. Many can remain in the uninhibited phase for weeks - months at most - then a wave of guilt overtakes them.

The conflict between church teachings and natural desires results in guilt, shame and anger.

Fundamentalist groups like Christian Embassy have infiltrated the very top of the U.S. military and gained positions of influence in the Pentagon.

The more educated and financially successful, the less religious a person is likely to be.

Living a religious sexual lifestyle is tantamount to living a lie.
Religion distorts our sexuality when the majority of religious people live one life for the public and another in private. It can be as simple as living as a "happily married" couple when you are both miserable with your sex life.

Once infected, the individual [infected with a god virus] cannot detect major contradictions in his beliefs and behavior. Belief systems become self-evident to him, and no amount of logical discourse will move him from his belief. If a Mormon and Catholic were to debate the merits of their respective religions, neither could see his own inconsistencies and logical fallacies, but would see the other's quite clearly.

Religion is evolving to survive but is losing the battle in many regions, largely because of the Internet. Sexual information is far more available now, which interferes with religion's ability to use sexual guilt to perpetuate.

Regardless the options you have, the most important thing is to choose consciously. Don't let ancient religious programming dictate your emotional and intellectual responses. You are a biological and social creature living in a biological and social world. Recognizing this gives you the power to make more rational decisions about how you want to enjoy the only life you have.

Normal people redirect their sexual energy all the time, but religion takes that skill and hijacks it. Religion says, "No, you cannot do that, that is sinful. Direct energy toward god."
Sexual desire does not disappear with increased religiosity and activity. Instead, it gets redirected but the thoughts and incoming stimulation continue.

Religious training and indoctrination creates internal states that are in conflict with natural urges and drives.

Religious programming has the power to distort normal, natural and intensely pleasurable behavior into something inconceivably disgusting.

All major religions put most of the responsibility for sexual morality on women. Religions teach that women should remain chaste and should control and hide their sexuality so men will not be tempted.

The religious guilt cycle interferes with learning and change. Rather than learning who he is as a sexual being, he measures himself against an impossible religious sexual standard and always comes up short. Absent religion, many unrestricted people can deal with their behavior in a rational manner.

It is not very romantic, but reality is a better basis for building a relationship than fantasizing about a soul mate or counting on a god to find you a partner.

The lancet fluke (Dicrocoelium) infects the brain of ants by taking control and driving them to climb to the top of a blade of grass where they can be eaten by a cow. The ingested fluke then lays eggs in the cow gut. Eventually, the eggs exit the cow, and hungry snails eat the dung (and fluke eggs). The fluke enters the snail's digestive gland and gets excreted in sticky slime full of a seething mass of flukes to be drunk by ants as a source of moisture.

Theology has not advanced an inch in the last 1,000 years. How much respect does a profession deserve if it cannot add to the knowledge and understanding of man?

The church may update its techniques and methods, but it is always in service of the institutional organism. This is one of the reasons why the pedophile priest issue is and will remain an endemic disease in the Catholic Church.

Religion tries to give us maps of sexuality that are no better than a 2,000-year-old map of my hometown.

Once one is convinced of the idea of eternal life or death, the person may do almost anything to achieve the reward or avoid punishment. He may fly an airplane into a building or become a missionary to another county. She may become a celibate nun or vow to raise a quiver full of children and homeschool them according to her religion. At the very least, the person will attend church regularly, give money, pray and do other things to ensure good standing with the deity. The root of this action is the hope for a reward and avoidance of punishment.

The more risk averse a person is, the higher his or her religiosity [ ... ]. In other words, risk-averse people don't want to take a chance on getting on the wrong side of god.

Wherever sexually restrictive religions invade, they bring the tools of repression with them - fear of punishment, shame if caught, guilt that the deity watches and terror of punishment. Islam, Christianity and Judaism, with their patriarchal, asexual god, have systemically overcome local sexual ideas throughout the world and infected cultures with sex-negative practices.

Islam began as a tribal religion, whereas Christianity began more as an individual or family religion. Christianity struck out from Palestine, converting one person or one family at a time. After the initial successes and conquests by Mohammed and his tribe, conversions were as much military as spiritual. Mohammed was both a political and military genius and used his success and charisma to convince the superstitious tribes around him that he had Allah on his side. As such, the sword was the instrument of persuasion.

Just as the chicken pox virus continues to live quietly in the body after the disease is gone, the god virus may live quietly in the host until something evokes it.

Today, Islam effectively resists secularization primarily because of its use of shame. Within the community, each person's sexuality is tied to his or her family and to the community. To violate the sexual rules of Allah violates both the family and the community. This powerful distortion allows Islam to remain isolated from secular sexual influences. The terror of social sanction or violence keeps young people from following their heart. It prevents healthy sexual exploration and development in men and women.

The sexual map we acquire in youth includes body image, masturbatory guilt, sexual preferences and more. From what turns us on to what turns us off. From attitudes about menstruation to the right of women to wear certain clothing. But using this guilt- and shame-ridden map as a guide to sexuality is like using a map of an ancient city sewer system to locate the fiber optic network. What if the only map we had of a city was made 2,000 years ago? How useful would it be today? My city was an open prairie 2,000 years ago with no roads and maybe a few animal paths. A map of that reality would be of little use today.

Many religions start with the notion that the deity is male and that, therefore, males are superior to women. This irrational idea informs boys' sexual map as they grow into men and breeds ideas such as the following: women are subservient to men; men have control over women's bodies; and men are more intelligent and closer to their god.

Fundamentalism in most of its forms is the active creation of antibodies to some threatening [god] virus. As long as threatening religions or mutations [heresies] are present, fundamentalism will churn out antibodies to keep the population under control and prevent mutations from getting out of hand.

Open, fact-based sex education is among the biggest threats to religion. Knowing the facts about sex reveals the myths that religions preach.

As conscious beings, we are capable of understanding that we will die some day. We also have the ability to imagine a world after we die. Religion hijacks this ability and injects fear of eternal torture and abandonment as well as the promise of eternal bliss. A perfect carrot and stick approach. The ability to imagine what is beyond the horizon of death is what allows religion to take control and make us do unnatural things.

Mohammed took his tribal customs and traditions and injected them into his new religion. Many of the ideas and traditions he implemented were already contained in the tribes he conquered, so in many cases, no major changes were required of his new followers. For example, most, if not all, of the tribes were polygamous. Women were seen primarily as chattel and under the complete control of their fathers or husbands. The communities of the new Islamic religion in the 600s CE often converted en masse. With minor modifications, they kept practicing their traditions. Mecca was already a major pagan religious shrine; Mohammed conveniently changed it into a place of worship and pilgrimage for Allah.
Practically speaking, Mohammed unified a fracture region under a single religion and did it with a superior military. Conquest, war, and male predominance were the hallmarks of Islam. Despite political splits over the centuries, the tribal nature of Islam remains intact.

Taking guilt out of the equation allows a person to see how he is hurting himself and others and what he can do about it. Eliminating guilt about sex allows a person to talk about needs and desires more honestly and negotiate with possible partners. If a person feels shame about his desires, he is unlikely to talk about it with anyone. As long as the cycle of guilt persists, harmful behavior will likely continue.

The abstinence-only programs and reclaimed-virginity movement make men and women ashamed of being sexual creatures before or outside of marriage.

Jesus must have been married to have been called a rabbi.