RELIGION IS BASED ON A WISH TO TREAT MAN'S WORD AS GOD'S AND AS MAN IS OFTEN BAD YOU CANNOT EXPECT RELIGION TO BE INTRINSICALLY GOOD 

Faith in the supernatural is the reason religion does harm. Such faith is bad in itself and risky and religion nurtures and reinforces it. There is plenty of evidence of people with shallow religious faith putting themselves and their children at risk. They do it for supernatural faith. The antics at some Catholic pilgrimage sites is a good example. The observation that not all religious people are violent means nothing when their faith is the problem. It is luck you can thank that their faith has not ruined them. It is not their faith or their religion you can thank.

 

It is man's word you take for granted when you embrace a religion. 

 

If you are going to believe men that they speak for God then why not just believe just because they say it regardless of whether God has really spoken or not? That is what you are doing anyway!

 

God is of extreme importance in himself, he would be if he is the creator and origin of all good and deserves all the credit for the good we do, therefore there will never be enough evidence that any man is speaking for him. Claiming to reveal God's word is idolatrous and risks more idolatry.

 

Once you deny that God has spoken to man, once you say that all prophets may have been passing off their own ideas as God's, you repudiate the religionists who claim authority over you. They do not like that one bit! Nobody knows if God benefits from Christianity but its leaders certainly do!
We like a view of good that suits ourselves even if it is not truly good.

 

Man is not intrinsically good and has a nasty side that is intrinsic though it differs from person to person. A man-made religion then has an intrinsic violent streak. Religion claims to be divine not human so that it may cover it up and blind people to it.

 

Nature abhors a vacuum. So does the malevolent and conniving side of human nature. The dark side of human nature will always find an outlet and it is there no matter how good the person acts. Human nature does not like goodness very much. It prefers goodness as it wants to understand it. Humanity wants a distortion of goodness, an impure goodness, and prefers it to goodness as it really is. It wants to decide what is good even if it is not really good but it must however look reasonably good. The person needs to be seen as good and to fit in his or her community. If a person seems very good you can be sure they have some outlet for their evil side. Sometimes very good people are in evil religions because they want the religion to mislead and hurt people for them and do the dirty work for them. They may not command the evil directly but they feel they share in it from a distance and that is enough. So their halos are not as shiny as first appears. The argument that some extremely good people exist in a religion is worthless unless the religion has nothing immoral or crazy in its teaching.

 

Religious people certainly act as if they believe that they have the God-given right to endorse evil for the sake of good. Consider how they are happier to see a person condone or enable evil than do evil in a more obvious way. Also, even if you seem harmless, the reason could be that you are happy that you are praising your God who allows terrible evils to happen because he does that. Condoning the mercilessness of God could be your way of unleashing your dark side. Even if you say you can think of reasons why God allows little babies to suffer terribly without any divine aid coming to them, it does not follow that you are necessarily against the worship of a God who callously lets evil happen and who does not care enough if at all. You could be hoping that none of the reasons are true and that God really is hurting others callously or maliciously. You could have the reasons but not care about them. It is human nature to prefer bad things to happen to strangers but not to you or your loved ones. You are under grave suspicion of secretly being happy that others are suffering.

 

Teachings about God say more about the people that deliver them and who invent ideas about God than God - even if there is a God. If God is the ultimate abuser they are not any better.

 

Not all religion believes in God. But belief in God makes religion worse!

 

Religion teaches that God knows better than us so we should obey him no matter what he asks and it teaches that God has to use evil for the sake of a greater good. Any religion of peace that teaches such a doctrine is as much to blame as a religion of war that teaches it. Both teach a bad principle and it is only by luck that one of them doesn't do harm with it. But it does indirect harm by teaching it.

 

Religion says God permits evil. But it does not admit that faith in God permits it too. This puts a terrible responsibility on the believer to be sure she is right before she watches a baby die in a fire screaming and says that God was right to let this happen. Faith in God certainly permits evil. It makes no sense to say that a believer should passively approve of disasters such as war and earthquakes being allowed to happen by God but to say that the believer cannot ever have the right to actively do evil and it is wrong in principle. What if God authorises you to do the evil on the basis that in the scheme if things it is for the best and he knows best? If God can do evil for the sake of good then why can't he let you do it? If you believe God uses evil then what is stopping you from doing evil? You cannot say it is wrong in principle. You might say circumstances will never call for it but that is saying that if they did it would be right.

 

We are talking about the principle. Bad things start with bad principles. Bad principles are too often unchallenged and when disaster happens it is too late.
Religion uses vicious circles based on magic to entrap people

 

The main power that religion uses to entrap people and manipulate them is by providing them with magical doctrines and making them think they have magical experiences.

 

Christianity teaches that God intervenes to help you believe in what he has testified to and to do what he asks even if it seems to be a mystery why he asks the things he does or seems absurd. This is grace - a supernatural help and support and revelation from God.

 

Grace is a miracle strength that comes from God that helps bad people change quickly though usually it takes time. When it does take time - it takes too much of it!

 

Believers blame the bad people for not accepting the grace correctly or promptly. Grace is seen a gift of God that one must actually want. The Bible says that when people sin a lot God's grace is at work all the more. See Romans 5:20. This is really just keeping people thriving on false hope. By waiting for grace to act, it removes the responsibility for man to heal himself and heal sinners. If nobody seems to be improving people think it does not matter for grace will help. Because grace works in a hidden way, nobody needs to worry about the evidence that somebody is recovering from devotion to sin. People need to believe the unexpected and the wonderful can happen. That is what drives them to accept the notion of grace.

 

A religion that is not improving people when it is using only human methods cannot use the we are not all bad excuse. Why? Because its methods and claims are testable. If you should be in a religion then be in one like that!

 

On the other hand, a religion that talks about grace and that makes it untestable. Catholics for example are big into saying that terrible sinners may be on the verge of turning to God or that God is working on them in hidden ways. Nobody can test another person to see if what is helping them really is grace.

 

Given how all religions like the we are not all bad excuse, it stands to reason that some religions will bring in grace to try and block people from seeing that grace is a smokescreen. They are trying to make "not all bad" sound logical when it is merely an excuse.

 

Instead of saying that it is some members who act in the name of a religion who are bad, we should admit that religious faith does make some people bad. If such faith is human it is not intrinsically good and so violence in the name of religion becomes possible. If such faith is seen as some higher power putting it in you by grace and telepathatically or supernaturally or magically the problem then is if human faith is being mistaken for being caused supernaturally. But the problem with the supernatural is that you can imagine that your own ideas are God's. You have no way of being sure that they are really from him. Millions of people have felt inspired by a higher power and been proven wrong. Each religion to be fair admits this. There are people who claim that God inspired them to have an abortion.
 
The Catholic who teaches that God uses evil and lets people commit immense atrocities for it is his wise plan and the Muslim who thinks it is God's will to blow yourself up to take innocent people to death have the exact same kind of faith. They just act it out differently. Both say yes to suffering for they want to please God or want to feel they please God. Not all members are violent but the membership that lives within the law is making the violence possible and must take some responsibility. Without Catholicism for example, there cannot be Catholic motivated violence.
 
When you believe in a God who uses evil to do good or if you think that evil is necessary for real good to take place then you are saying it is reasonable to believe that God can command you to go to war for him. Even if you are not violent, you are still to blame for the believers that are for you and they both cut the key to open the door of violence. If there is a God it is reasonable that you may have to do harm for him but you will deny the harm is really evil in the scheme of things. If there is no God and you believe in him, you are making it reasonable for you to believe you may have to harm for him. Do not enable damaging beliefs and behaviour - you could promote healthy beliefs and behaviours instead.
 
We should not condone and enable religion's evil by excusing it by saying, "That is just a few apples. It is a peaceful and good religion." Faith is not worth the risk. It is superficial to point to the believers being mostly good as evidence that the religion is good. It is insulting to tell them that their goodness doesn't flow from them naturally and that they need religion to unstop it and let it out or even to magic it into them. In fact, if people are that problematic then surely their religions will be problematic too? Bad people like to pretend they have been cured and to lull people into false security. To tell people that their goodness is God's work not theirs is demeaning them and paves the way for an anger and arrogance that can turn violent.

 

This has to be shouted. FAITH IN ANYTHING CAN LEAD TO VIOLENCE OR BE USED TO EXCUSE VIOLENCE BUT MAGICAL FAITH AND FAITH IN THE SUPERNATURAL DOES IT BETTER BECAUSE YOU CANNOT PROVE TO A PERSON THAT THEIR VIOLENT INSPIRATIONS FROM A HIGHER POWER ARE FROM THEMSELVES AND THAT THEY ARE DELUDED. THEY WILL BE OFFENDED IF YOU TRY FOR YOU DO NOT LIVE IN THEIR SKIN AND YOU ARE NOT THE HIGHER POWER SO THE COMMUNICATION LINES WILL BREAK. THUS EVEN THE NON-VIOLENT MEMBERS OF A RELIGION BEAR A MORAL AND INDIRECT BUT REAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT THE VIOLENT ONES DO BECAUSE THEY REPRESENT SUPERNATURAL FAITH AND PREACH IT AND PASS IT ON TO THEIR CHILDREN AND INFLUENCE THOSE WHO THEY COME INTO CONTACT WITH IN ITS FAVOUR. THEY ENABLE.

Evil founders of a religion usually decree that it must do good works. This is usually so that the founders feel better about their fraud. It encourages them and makes their lying easier. They need to teach enough good to attract followers and win their loyalty even they don't deserve it. No lie can succeed unless the person telling it fakes sincerity. It makes the lying less stressful and come more naturally.

 

Defenders of religion point to how incredibly noble deeds can be done in its name. They will also say that religion can generate mind-boggling savagery. But do religious people who do great good really always do it in the name of their religion? Certainly not! And those that do may be telling a white lie. They may feel that the adulation may change them so they attribute the goodness to their religion's influence in order to try and stay humble. Or they may be trying to use fake humility to impress others even more. It is an insult and evil to say that person x is doing good because she is a Catholic. Say she is doing good because it is her. It is different if she says she is doing things in the name of the religion. But you cannot just assume she is unless she tells you.

 

The deeds done in a religion's name are few and far between. Just because a Catholic missionary works for the Church it does not mean she only helps people for the sake of God or the Church.

 

Good is like a default. Everybody is good most of the time. Thus religion cannot be praised as a religion for doing good. The bad is what speaks not the good.

The bad is more reflective of a religion than the good for the good happens more often by default anyway. It is a default doing the good not the religion.  You know what I am blaming for the bad.  A bad thing can be good for some and bad needs to have a good side to survive.

No Copyright