And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger...

We were watching Survivor: Marquesas on OLN, it turns out one of my favorite Survivors is in it, Rob Mariano (or more commonly known as Boston Rob or Rob&Amber). Now first of all this is weird because we know him from after this Survivor season because he was in Survivor All Stars and The Amazing Race, this is almost like knowing someone and then getting to see a tape of how they were 3-5 years ago, definitely strange. He is one of my favorites yet he hasn't won any one of the shows has been in (although you can argue that he split a million with Amber in All Stars, but he still did not win outright). The reason I like him is that he is smart enough to manipulate people without them realizing it. Best 2 examples: while on the Amazing Race all of the teams were on a bus, most teams were sitting in the back of the bus. Rob was at the front, with maybe 3 more teams, he convinced each of them to give him money (in this show you only get a set amount of money per "leg") to bribe the bus driver into not opening the back door once they got to their destination. This might not seem huge but the kicker is that he did not put any money in the pot himself therefore making the bribe free for him while earning the other teams trust since they had no clue what he did, and finally getting a nice lead once they arrived, genius. The best one though is when they were at an eating challenge where they had to eat a whole bunch of meat (probably like 8 pounds after being cooked but I'm not sure), he realized pretty quickly that it would be very hard for him to eat all of it, so he asked what would be the penalty for quitting, which was a 4 hour penalty from the time the next team arrived at the challenge. He took the penalty and once the next team arrived he convinced them to quit as well therefore guaranteeing that he would not be the last person to leave that stop, again genius.

After all that background on Boston Rob, I want to talk about something he said during one of the Marquesas episodes ***...Warning, this post will be taking a very weird turn in the next few lines, watch out...*** He said (I'm paraphrasing): "Fear is what keeps people in line, because of fear of being voted off other people will vote with me, ..." Basically he is saying that people are so afraid of being voted off the show that they do what other people tell them to do just as long as their name does not come up. I've seen so many survivors by now to tell you that most of those people are along for the ride and eventually do get voted off. However the reason that line stuck with me is not because it was talking about the game of Survivor but because it described the very reason why religion is so powerful ( Hey, I warned you that this was going to get weird, in fact if you are very into religion, you might not like me anymore, hopefully that won't happen).

Lets think about this for just little bit, do most people believe in God because they truly have faith? Be honest, don't think with your church brain, think with your common sense/analytical brain. You see I've always thought that people believe "just in case", just in case there is a heaven and/or a hell. Religion in its many forms has created such a myth that people are just afraid of the consequences once their life is over, not necessarily during their lives. Its always been done, look at the Indians throughout the Americas (Aztecs, Mayans, Incas, etc), they had many gods they believed in, however most of those were based on natural events like Hurricanes, earthquakes, just the plain old sun and moon. They feared most of these things since they could not explain them and therefore worshiped them so they wouldn't get "mad" and unleash the fury. There is not much difference to modern religion, only that the natural disasters/events have been replaced by a book that tells you what to do and what happens if you don't. Isn't that convenient **please note sarcastic tone here**.

I've always had problems with religion in general and struggled believing, and as I get older I believe less and less. To top it off, I once watched a stand up comedy special featuring George Carlin (probably one of the 5 best comics of all time), the last 20min of his routine were devoted to this topic. In it he goes to say how he decided to worship the Sun, 'cause you can count on it being there, it keeps you warm and it gives light. Now he doesn't pray to the sun, no he wouldn't dare, he preys to Joe Pesci ,because he "looks like a guy who can get things done". But the most fun part about this was when he said that since he started praying to Joe his prayers have come true at a 50-50 rate...the same rate as when he prayed to God. He does go on to say that there is no God but I won't say that because I'm still afraid.

Go ahead, tell me I'm going to Hell...I already know I am...if there is one off course.