The point is Parenti is writing about the Bible as tons of believers read and profess it. They then extend those ridiculous readings into politics to attempt to impose their vision of the world on others. That's what he's talking about. He's not writing as a religious scholar. What's the problem?
I don't get all this handwringing about dissing teabaggers or religion. Is there a problem with the passage below too?
^^^^^^^^^ CB: Ditto
>Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and
>self-esteem of man who has either not yet won
>through to himself, or has already lost himself
>again. But man is no abstract being squatting
>outside the world. Man is the world of
>manstate, society. This state and this society
>produce religion, which is an inverted
>consciousness of the world, because they are an
>inverted world. Religion is the general theory
>of this world, its encyclopedic compendium, its
>logic in popular form, its spiritual point
>d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction,
>its solemn complement, and its universal basis
>of consolation and justification. It is the
>fantastic realization of the human essence since
>the human essence has not acquired any true
>reality. The struggle against religion is,
>therefore, indirectly the struggle against that
>world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
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