Religion and its philosophical base

If a religious leader makes a speech on world affairs pretty much without exception its contents can be predicted as they follow a familiar trajectory unchanged for centuries and will contain certain elements varying only in minor deviations and detail as befits the events of the day.The unerring message will be that the problems of the world can only be addressed by unselfishness,self sacrifice,charity,love and that, translated into politics, this will entail:collectivism,socialism,redistribution of wealth,repudiation of profit, and all of this will be interlarded with an assault on private enterprise,attacks on individualism,materialism and the intellect.This was pretty much the message that the pope delivered in the EU parliament recently and needless to say it was met with rapturous applause.This phenomenon described can be the cause of only two things.Either this is a misrepresentation of the true message of Christianity on the part of the pope and this seems unlikely as he is a learned man or the very essence and philosophy of christianity is pure unadulterated evil.Assuming it is the latter then we need to examine what is at the heart of this philosophy which is common it must be said across all the main religions and probably all the other lesser known religions as well.The essence or base of this philosophy is of course altruism -the idea that humans beings exist not for their own hapiness and fulfillment but for that of  others who they must sacrifice  to and this and this alone is the only purpose to their life.And the only possible political translation of this philosophy is collectivism,the common good for whom individuals are to be sacrificed.All goverments justify their social programmes by the altruist code of self sacrifice invoking its religious roots and it is the prevailing ideology of the age and indeed most past ages.This is the moral evil that has to be confronted and it can only be done on philosophical grounds as this is the battle ground the collectivist have chosen to wage their war for centuries on man and the individualism that stands in their way to complete tyranny.