The revealed religions are of special importance to us. Those religions, that trace back to one human being, that told other human beings, he or she had been bestowed upon a revelation by God, and who asks others mostly by threatening with eternal perdition to believe this very revelation. The revealed religions are quasi the top of the religions of the I, the ‘ego’.
Not only the God, who is said to have given a revelation, is an ‘I’, an ‘ego’. Also the revelator speaks as an ‘I’, that asks others to submit their ‘I’ to his. If we consider the matter impartially we notice the revelator to be only talking of himself und that the belief he is asking is the belief in him, the revelator.
Thus he also suggests at the very same time, God will under no circumstances bestow a similar revelation upon anyone else, that everybody else is excluded from a similar revelation and that God him/herself will abide by this revelation for all times to come. The revelator raises thus not only above his followers but also above the God revealed by him. That is why particularly the revealed religions require enlightenment and purgation.
"...did any of your students ever become enlightened?"
Fellow Citizens: Pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?
I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion. I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive.
