My Textbook on Religion

Preface
Every society in the history of the world has engaged in some form of this batshittery. We would like to move on from it, but many, many people have made damn good livings over the centuries practicing, teaching, and writing about it, so we thought, what the hell?

Universities and colleges being no better, yours is offering you a course on this crap and here's the textbook for it.

Suck it up, buttercups.

Introduction
This text is organized along the usual nutbar lines. We'll do the oldest stuff first, when humans were still pissing their pants over thunder and lightning and stuff and came up with some (sometimes) nifty stories to explain all that terror.

Then we move on to the next phase, when some slightly smarter humans figured out that they could take control by exploiting that terror by crafting more complicated stories with gods and smiting and guilt and things like that.

They also learned to write and so textbook publishing was born.

Later, things got more sophisticated and the guys in charge (and they were all guys) decided to demonize some people and activities -- principally folks like those icky women and sexual-nonconformists and activities like thinking -- so they could have more control and more money.

Later still, they divided into a lot of gangs (helps if you've seen West Side Story or Gangs of New York or other cool movies we're too old for) to enslave other peoples and steal stuff/land and wage wars and bomb things and rape people.

Which is still going on, note.

And that's pretty much it.

There will be questions.

[Note to editors, proofreaders, formatters, and indexers: This is how the book works. We mention some deity, person, movement, you get the idea, that we want the schmoes to remember. We'll put that in bold with a parenthetical note to you guys of how many pages that shit takes up so you don't hurt your heads reading it. We'll also put other key concepts (ROTFLMAO) in bold. We guarantee that the text is as well-written, -spelled, -punctuated, and as comprehensible as any of the original sources, so you don't have to read that either. You're welcome.

Note to illustrators: please put as many colourful and pointless pictures, maps, and tables in as possible. Thanks.]

The End.

Now of course those last two paras were NOT meant to get into print, but somehow, unaccountably, they did, and all the editors, proofreaders, formatters, and indexers blamed all the others.

And I feel better now.