MORE THAN literal, semantic truth, this simple statement -- "Religion is the root of all evil" -- is also the key to World Peace.

Many people don't realize that religion is NOT morality. More than anything else, religion is what drives people to immoral behavior, and it is also the way they cover up and evade responsibility for their immoral acts.

This has been true all through human history, from the religious persecutions recorded in the Bible to the Inquisition, the Crusades, the Holocaust and the autrocities visited on Bosnia after the breakup of Yugoslavia.

"Hate your next door neighbor, but don't forget to say Grace," as Barry McGuire sang a half century ago. Or in the case of the current, ongoing right-wing Christian-led American Crusade in Iraq -- steal, murder, torture and rape and then lie to your face about it, describing crimes against humanity as "Fighting for Freedom and Democracy."

Fact is, religion has inspired more evil -- meaning more inhumanity of man against man -- than anything else in human history. This realization yields an obvious path to world peace: "Outlaw Religion For World Peace," as was done so successfully and with such peaceful results in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia before the fall of the Soviet Empire.

Religion is the Old Darkness that haunts humanity. To move forward -- meaning NOT destroy ourselves and the Earth itself -- we as a species must put aside religious superstition.

As Stevie Wonder sang in "Superstition": "When you believe in things that you don't understand, you suffer. Superstition ain't the way..."