"The End Of False Religion Is Near!"

As I was leaving my house this morning I was approached by a sweet old lady. She handed me a couple of thin pamphlets and told me that I must read them because they are of the most vital importance. Yes, she was a Jahova's Witness. One of the pamphlets was the usual "Awake!" that you always see them with, the other was a much shorter pamphlet called "The End of False Religion is Near!" (They sure do like their exclamation marks, don't they.)

Well, being an easily entertained man, who finds reading religious propaganda fun, I decided to read the pamphlets. Now here comes the strange part--the shorter one, "The End Of False Religion Is Near!" was actually incredibly intelligent. Their criticisms were sharp and biting. It wasn't until the last page, where they began talking about their own religious beliefs, that stupidity began to set in.

Just a few things that they pointed out:

"Are you distressed about crimes commited in the name of religion? Do the warfare, terrorism, and corruption perpetrated by those who claim to serve God offend your sense of justice? Why does religion seem to be at the root of so many of the world's problems?"

"Power-hungry leaders are cynically manipulating people's religious sentiments for their own needs. As a result the world threatens to sink into madness."

"Most religions teach that the soul or spirit is some invisible part of a human that survives the death of the physical body. By means of this teaching, many of these religions exploit their members, charging money to pray for the departed souls. However...'The living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all.' (Ecclesiastes 9:5) Jesus taught that the dead will be resurrected--an unnecessary action if humans had an immortal soul."

"The beast that the harlot rides is the world's political powers. False religion straddles the back of this political beast, attempting to influence its decisions and to control its direction."

Were it not for their constant use of biblical imagery, and of course the last page telling you to join their religion, one would certainly be led to believe that the writers of this phamplet were enlightened atheists. In the end however, they run head first into the same pitfall as Joseph Smith. They see that there is no true religion, and rather than scrap the ideal of religion all together, they simply create one more false religion.

At any rate, I can still hope that the title of their pamphlet proves to be at least some what prophetic.