Amen

First off, I don't think Tool has every been anti GOD. They have been anti organized religion, or they have been against humans fucking up the context of some religions. Perhaps it is eqaully as narrow minded to hear God or Heaven and get all riled up.

How exactly do you know they are wrong? If you could tell us that then there would be no more religious intolerance or petty bickering over religion. So lets listen everyone: MJR has proof that every religion is wrong! We are so lucky to have such an intelligent thinker amongst us.

(Please keep in mind I am a stone-cold atheist.)

walkerw8's reference to the Einstein site is an interesting one. I think this quote specifically is fitting to this particular argument:

"I was barked at by numerous dogs who are earning their food guarding ignorance and superstition for the benefit of those who profit from it. Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics and comes from the same source. They are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against the traditional "opium of the people"—cannot bear the music of the spheres. The Wonder of nature does not become smaller because one cannot measure it by the standards of human moral and human aims."

-Albert Einstein

I myself am unable to subscribe to any kind of organized religion without feeling like an idiot performing a ventriloquist act to myself when attempting to 'pray' to God, but I still do not deny the significance of it. To say the very idea of religion is wrong and stupid would be equivalent to saying CULTURE as a concept is itself stupid, as they are often very closely tied together. Inventing religion was a big philsophical step in human intellect, because from a time where we were too occupied with surviving one day at a time, we as a species were able to produce a surplus of food and take the time to wonder WHY we exist and how the universe works. I'd personally agree with you in being dissatisfied with the hypocrisies and baseless claims found in many religions, seemingly placed only to control the people who fall for it all, but to close your mind to something like a song lyric simply because it MAY imply some kind of religious theme is being JUST as closed-minded as the nutty fundamentalists that staple themselves to the pages of the Bible, or w/e book they believe in. Maynard's not brainwashing you or trying to manipulate you to think anything; he (or the band; strange how most credit that Tool deserves goes specifically to Maynard) just wrote a beautiful song for you to enjoy and maybe stimulate you to ponder for yourself its meaning and maybe some meaning to other ideas you may have swimming in your head. Unlike some people here, I bear no hostility towards you, mjr, because I can empathize with what you're believing, as long as you might see why people are pointing the hypocrite finger right back at you for your comments.

I believe sir you have hit the nail dead center :)