WHEN PEOPLE SAY, "MY RELIGION WILL REFORM ONE DAY" AS AN EXCUSE FOR STAYING IN A BAD RELIGION
Christianity says it is the body of Christ and Christ is truth. Christianity
claims to teach the truth and to provide the truth and says its identity is
about the truth. So there is no Christian identity in reality if the religion is
false. Indeed a religion that does not believe the truth gives it its identity
for it teaches the truth should be abjured and abandoned. Are we saying that
nobody is a Christian if Christianity is false? Yes! It is just a word.
Being in an evil political party or organisation is only justified if you can
bring it down or get it to change the beliefs that form its identity. You are an
enemy to it. Being in the organisation while condemning it is hypocrisy when you
don't have to stay or are not doing enough about the evil. Being in a human
organisation that is bad is different from being in a religion that claims to be
revealed by God but which does great harm or does nothing to learn from modern
discoveries. Consider how Catholicism won't let go of Adam and Eve though their
existence is impossible according to the evidence. That is just the Church's
polite way of telling science, "We like some of it but for rest of it that does
not suit us just fuck off!" That is not devotion to science but cherry-picking
it.
If you are in a bad political movement you can say you are working within it to
improve it and you might be speaking the truth. It is only a human entity. But
to say the same of a religion that claims to be approved and revealed by a God
whose laws we cannot completely understand is different. It just enabling the
problem and being a hypocrite. If it is man-made God does not want you in it. Or
do you not care if it is man-made as long as it agrees with you? If religious
cherry pickers are not insincere Christians then nobody is.
If a religion claims to be set up by God what are you doing when you try to
change its essential teaching? You are assuming that its teaching is man-made
and therefore in need of fixing after all. So what are you doing in a religion
that is man-made but which claims to be from God? You are enabling it to tell
its core lie. Lies lead to more lies and to corruption. What if the religion is
bad but from God and you are following a bad God? And how can the religion
change if it claims to be revealed by God and that God's teachings are not
always very understandable?
If people are bad, they know what they are - we call them bad because they can
change but won't. Is there any point in trying to change them? Change yourself
and forget about others. That is why saying that you are in a bad or irrational
religion in order to improve or reform it is nonsense and an excuse. Better to
be in a good religion instead of trying to reform a bad one. It honours the good
religion, discourages conversion to bad religion and avoids the risk of you
through human weakness being corrupted. You need the support of the good
religion so join it.
Say a golf club abuses. Regardless of what it does, it is not a religion or like it. A religion is not to be treated as the same thing even if it is. They are inherently different. That is why some say you cannot say, “Leave a golf club for its sins but do not leave a religion for its sins.” But surely it should be the other way around? Golf clubs are needed more than religion or any particular religion. And if the religion is man-made it deserves less respect than a golf-club so if it sins then leave it.
Say a charity abuses people. A religion that abuses is nothing like it for it claims to be ontologically different. A religion is that which claims to be ontologically different from just another organization or family. If it is different then it has to be treated different. If you can stay in the charity and call yourself decent you cannot do that with the religion simply because it is different and presents itself as different.
What is the real issue when religion is a problem?
Is it the specific faith? Is it the members thinking they are right?
Extremists do act as if they are sure they cannot be wrong. Religion has a hold
on people and if it is right to then hoping for reform is silly. It is
replacing one form of conditioning with a new one. If faith and doubt go
together it does not follow that religious believers let themselves realise they
doubt. Such faith is like certainty. It feels certain and acts certain. Doubters
are forbidden to doubt so that they might start to programme themselves to act
and think as if they know what they say is true is in fact true. Only a
faith that claims to be revealed by a power smarter than us can lead to members
thinking they are right. The problem is the faith and the person.
Instead of incrementally reforming a religion with bad roots from within we
should leave. Those who see the problems and stay are guilty of not taking the
violent man-made origins for their religion seriously. Why be in a bad religion
if there is so much better out there?