Corruption and bribery are not synonyms. What is business at its heart except bribery?

Bribery has become commonplace with the advent of the 'service fee'. Tell me, what is the difference between a service fee and a bribe? The main difference is that a service fee is legitimised and generally subject to a business process. Though this might give you the impression that it creates a fair system, it doesn't really. Golf course deals happen all the time, it's the way of the world.

I live in Australia where everything has a service fee and where service fees are generally waived when a business has a good relationship with a customer. Our standard of living is quite decent considering everything is so expensive.

Sure, when a government employee is stealing from the people to pad the pockets of private corporations, it's corrupt and should be dealt with accordingly. But a lot of the time the line between corruption, bribery, and business is all too blurry.

As we say in finance: Any sufficently advanced scam is indistinguishable from business.

Yes, but meanwhile they are happy to wear the mark of greed.

These evils have always existed in one form or another. The only difference now is that our awareness of them is increasing.

You say that it was better than it is now, but I disagree. As a scientist I will take truth over sweetness.

Don't be fooled by the seemingly infinite variations of evil that you find in nature, they all boil down to a simple root cause.

The nature of this root cause is being revealed on a global scale. You'll know it when you see it.

Security is not for your protection, it is for the (bank's, government's, employer's) protection. They can't profit from a mutually co-operative society, only a divided and individualistic one.

Every cell in your body shares its entire sustenance with its neighbours. When a cell doesn't, it is called cancer. Hence the slow and painful death of our society.

Jealousy. Plain, obvious, jealousy. That's why they say they agree with what he's doing, but not how he's doing it.

Einstein said "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

Also, "A human being is part of a whole, called by us universe – a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a prison, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. Nobody can fulfill this task to the end, but just the efforts to reach this goal are a part of liberation and a foundation for inner confidence."

Also, "Man’s real value is defined by the degree to which he has liberated himself from egoism and by the means he used to attain it."

The Kabbalist Rambam (Maimonides), a rabbi with whom the Jewish Einstein was certainly familiar, asserted that when the Creator created the universe, he created matter, and that time was one of its qualities (Motion in Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and Comparisons with Classical Views)

There are further relationships between Einstein, Kabbalah, and the Torah, but I will not bore you with them. It will be enough to say that Einstein was not living in a vacuum.

You're right, religious people are misguided. Religion is a convenient illusion that was created to ultimately prepare the world for a true understanding of nature. Even though it may be misguided, it is not without its purpose.

If you're an atheist, and you reject society's childish beliefs, you are already much closer to the truth than all the religious masses put together.

We don't shame children for believing in Santa Claus, and so we shouldn't shame the religious for believing in a man on a cloud. When they graduate from this belief, they will understand the necessity of illusion and how it offers protection before maturity.

The Bible was created in this way to provide both revelation and concealment. Neither one provides the whole truth - it is the current alternating between them that develops us.

At face value, the Bible is a good example. However, concealed within this outwardly perverted tome lies a body of great spiritual knowledge. Those stories use symbols to describe spiritual concepts (see Aggadah). These profound concepts can be learnt by anyone so inclined. I'm not saying it shouldn't be banned, I personally think there are better ways to enter spirituality - just that the overwhelming majority would leave it unmolested.

I understand that you may be not be spiritual, suffice it to say that many are.

Until Selena Kitt can justify her stories as more than base masturbation material, the great unwashed will unfortunately perceive it as a threat to the species. For a primer on biological repugnance, check out something like Origin of Emotions (Mark Devon, Harvard University).

It is very interesting how the unconscious cannot separate fact from fiction. This is true within the human body (as detailed by your friendly neighbourhood psychologist) and human society in general, as each individual element reflects the whole. These unconscious people sleepwalk their way through life, chasing pleasure and shrinking from pain like mere children. And like any child in the family, they rule society with an iron fist. This is the law of nature.