Religion in Perspective.

I found this “Statement of Sorts” a analogy of “How Religion works and doesnt work. I found it very intresting and decided to Post it for everyone.

Begin//My analogy is this. If I’m having a problem in my life and I feel the need to see a shrink I want to find someone who’ll give me the tools I need to solve the problem on my own. I also want him/her to make sure that I know how to use these tools in similar (or not so similar) situations in the future. The goal of our sessions should be that the day would come in the not too distant future when I won’t need him/her any more. Let’s face it; we’re human and sometimes we need the help of others to see our way out of a problem or a tough situation. I don’t think there�s anything wrong with that. But we should be capable of getting to the point where we don’t need professional help to solve our problems. The day may come where you need to see a shrink again and hopefully things will go smoothly once again and you’ll be able to be self-sufficient once again.

Also, to continue with a similar analogy, suppose you are ill and you require medication to get better. You understand that if you take a prescribed medicine for a prescribed period of time, you’ll eventually get better and you won’t need to take the medicine any more. When you get sick again you’ll repeat this process.

If you have a disease (be it physical or mental) you may need to take medicine or see a shrink on a regular basis to function properly, for the rest of your life.

Religion is like this, even the ‘good’ ones. It really is like a disease, not an incurable one more like drug or alcohol addiction. Religion has more in common with bad therapy than it does with good therapy. People make jokes about psychologists/psychiatrists/chiropractors and how some of them (the bad ones) make a living by suckering people into thinking that they have major problems that need serious help indefinitely. Sound familiar? I’ve heard people say things like, “If I didn’t have church to go to each week, my life would fall apart” or “I don’t know how I’d make it through the week without my faith,” or even “I don’t know how I could be a good person if it wasn’t for my faith.” I hear similar comments from some people referring to caffeine, cigarettes, and beer.

If this doesn’t sound like a disease, then I don’t know what does.

Certainly people also go to their church, mosque, temple, or whatever for more than group therapy. They go to ingratiate themselves to a hypothetical supernatural being. But the act of worship is so intertwined into the group therapy thing that “ne’er the two shall part.” This psychotic symbiosis is the key that keeps the whole process going in its sadistic little circle.

Some people might say that I sound mad, bitter, or even a bit angry.

You’re damn right I’m angry. Religion is a disease of the mind that preys on young and old, strong and weak. The only way to successfully combat it is through critical thinking, which is seriously lacking in today’s world. Our young are the most susceptible to its wiles. What makes me mad is that these people who are suffering from this awful disease would love nothing better than to pass this disease on to our children.

You’re damn right I’m angry. Imagine how you’d feel about a drug pusher hanging out at your kid’s school passing out free doses of PCP. Or how you’d feel about some kid trying to get you child to shoot up or to smoke dope in the bathroom at school or to drink liquor at a school dance. You should feel the same emotions towards those who’d seek to poison the minds of your children, that you’d feel towards those who’d seek to poison the bodies of your children.

The only difference I see is one of these two is acceptable in today’s society and the other isn’t. I long for a day when neither one is acceptable to anyone.

Alcohol, drug, and smoking addictions can all be cured. So can religious addiction. I’m a testament to that fact. I think that those of us who are free from the tentacles of religious belief have a moral obligation to expose religion as the disease that it is. I’d much rather fight an offensive battle than a defensive one. Let’s actively seek to find a way to go after this “dragon” and “slay him.” Let’s find its weak spot (the fact that it’s a disease of the mind might be it) and then let’s find the right sword (I may need some help here, maybe a best selling book dealing with this aspect of religion by Pinker, Dawkins, and Shermer would be a good start) and then let’s kill this beast once and for all. What do you say?\\ End.

I would like to also say that I believe Strongly that “Early Man needed Religion to Organize and Develope” it was a way of bringing people together for a “Common Cause” but as we have progressed and Kings and Leaders do not use Religious influence to “Command their People” (Like saying to their people “God has told me to Build a defense system to ward off attack!!, No quite simply the leader knew there was a need for it, but to convince his people it had to come from a “higher authority for them to agree”.) We Live in a modern era of Science and Fact that leaves little room for “guidance from a outside force” to lead us into the future. Yet people who “feel something missing” or in simple terms “Lack self confidence or self guidance” find Religion as a way to justify their lives. In addition to that the “Process of Recruitment at early age” combined with the “Horrors of the bible” these children of Religion feel trapped in something they Fear. Why would any reasonable person fear their creator in the first place? The list of Hypocracy in the Bible is too long to list here in this simple blog, and we all know the traditional ones that come to mind anyway. I found it very intresting while watching the film “Religulous” that thousands of years before our bible we practiced many religions with simular themes as our current one. That one fact alone should inspire people to look at the obvious falts in a “very old belief system, that is now outdated and mishandled” and that has caused the deaths of billions of people throughout history in the name of “peace and love”. I say its time for the world to begin to integrate the thought “that we alone are the masters of our destiny” by making “good choices for ourselves” we have “Good results for society as a whole”.

~ by melman65 on November 18, 2008.