The Ultimate deceptive religious treason.

Orientation
Husband to wife: Look at this, honey. It says here
that the Earth travels 595 million miles around the
sun every year at a speed of 66,000 miles per hour.
At the same time, the Earth is rotating around the
center of the galaxy. The galaxy is traveling endlessly
through space and is pulling the Earth along with it.
Now how can you say we never go anywhere?
HELLO, AND WELCOME. This is our planet Earth. Before
starting our journey through history, let us take a brief look
at our little space orb from the vantage point of newcomers
undergoing a brief orientation.
"Spaceship Earth," as some people like to call it, is a
relatively small celestial body. The American space shuttle
can completely orbit the Earth in only ninety minutes. In
modern aircraft, the crossing of once-formidable oceans
has become little more than a dull routine for many an
airborne businessperson plying his or her trade between
continents. By merely picking up a telephone and dialing,
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6 William Bramley
one can speak instantly to someone on the opposite side of
the globe. We are all witnesses to the remarkable manner
in which high-speed travel and telecommunications make
contact between distant points on Earth quickly and easily
manageable.
Earth is not only small, it is also quite remote. If you and
I were to take a position outside of the Milky Way galaxy,
we would see that Earth is near the galaxy's outer edge. In
addition, the Milky Way is dwarfed by much larger galaxies. This isolated location might help explain why Earth
has so few contacts with extraterrestrial civilizations, if such
civilizations exist. Earth is afloat in the distant boondocks
of a minor galaxy.
Despite its isolation, Earth is pretty, and it is inhabited.
As of this writing, the human population numbers over five
billion people. Add to that figure all of the other large
mammals, and we find that the lands and waters of Earth
are occupied by an enormous population of intelligent and
semi-intelligent creatures.
What kind of animals are human beings? As a student of
biology can quickly tell you, humans constitute that animal
species known as Homo sapiens. The work Homo comes
from the Latin word for man, and sapiens means being
wise or sensible. The label Homo sapiens therefore denotes
a creature possessed of wisdom or sensibility. Most Homo
sapiens do live up to their title, by and large, although a
small number obviously do not.
When dealing with a human being, are we only confronting an animal? As it turns out, we are not. It appears
that we are faced with something much more important: a
spiritual being.
The idea that there is a spiritual reality to life is ageless.
Some religions have held the belief for millennia that human
bodies are mere puppets animated by spiritual beings. Often
accompanying this tenet are doctrines concerning "reincarnation" or an "afterlife." In the Christian religion, the word
"soul" has long been used to denote a spiritual entity which
survives the death of the physical body.
Some people claim that an ancient wisdom about the spirit had once existed. If such a wisdom ever did exist, it long
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ago became hopelessly bemuddled by countless false ideas,
strange mystical beliefs and practices, incomprehensible
symbolism, and erroneous scientific teachings. As a result,
the subject of the spirit is today almost unstudiable. On top
of that, many scholars trained in Western scientific methods reject the idea of a soul entirely, apparently because
they cannot put a spirit under a microscope and watch it
squiggle, or plant electrodes in it and give it a jolt.
As good fortune would have it, some breakthroughs on
the subject have been made within recent decades. Evidence that every person is a unique spiritual being is strong
indeed. Volumes of fascinating testimony have been gathered from people who have undergone so-called "near-death"
experiences. During such episodes, many people undergo
the sensation of leaving their bodies, especially as their
bodies approached death. Some psychiatrists argue that this
phenomenon is nothing more than a self-protective illusion
of the mind. It is not as simple as that Many near-death
victims are able to perceive their bodies from an accurate exterior perspective. They retain their complete selfawareness and personal identity even though their bodies
are unconscious.*
In light of such testimony, it is not surprising that a few
religions, such as Buddhism, believe that people are immortal spiritual beings which become enmeshed in bodies during life. Buddhists conclude that this is caused, at least in
part, by the spirit's long-term interaction with the physical
universe. In sharp contrast to psychiatric theory, Buddhists
teach that spiritual separation from the body is the healthiest
state for human beings and Buddhists seek to attain that
separation without suffering physical trauma or death. Their
*A short but interesting article entitled, "A Typology of Near-Death
Experiences," by Dr. Bruce Greyson, is found in the August 1985 issue
of the American Journal of Psychiatry. Dr. Greyson presents a statistical
breakdown of the different types of "near-death" phenomena and notes,
"Individuals reporting these three types of near-death experiences did not
differ significantly on demographic variables." (p. 968). Dr. Greyson did