Christopher Cashell (topher) wrote,
Christopher Cashell

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Religious idiocy.

I'm fascinated by religion. I love learning about religious history, philosophy, spirituality, and pretty much anything related to it. And due to my background and personal beliefs, Christianity does hold a strong sway.

However, many people who talk to me about religion get the impression that I'm very anti-religion. I'm not. However, I *am* quite against most organized religion. I've found that the vast majority of organized religions tend to twist, bend, pervert, and distort their own beliefs in order to further their own personal beliefs. As a simple and easy to show example, look at Christianity. It's amazing some of the things that people push as "Christian beliefs" that have absolutely no basis in the Bible, or anywhere in biblical history. But you can guarantee they'll find a way to justify how "it's the right thing" and "they're sure that God would endorse it if he could".

Or, here's another beautiful example, courtesy of lonita. I strongly urge you to read this article. In a nutshell, the Catholic Church is claiming that condoms provide no protection against AIDS/HIV, because condoms are porous and the virus can get through. This has to be one of the biggest loads of crap I've seen in a long time.

Seriously, guys. Let's remember the purpose of religion. . . it's to help us understand things that we don't or can't otherwise understand. It's not there to try to force reality into some bizarro unreality that you wish were real. I've never understood this. Pretty much everywhere else in the realms of organized though, you propose an idea/philosophy/conjecture/etc, and as new information or facts come about, you allow your beliefs to evolve to match the information you have.

Too many people get caught up in arguing whether or not things like the Bible are literally true. . . and ignore the fact that it doesn't matter! All that matters is whether you can learn something from it. I personally think the Bible is an amazing piece of literature. And I think you can learn a lot from it. . . however, you *must* be careful to interpret it with an open mind, and with the understanding that it was written two thousand years ago, and the world was a very different place then.

What really bothers me about the article I linked to above, is that blind faith and stupidity, when combined like they're being here, will result in people dying. When blind faith and stupidity allow people to justify outright lies, and people die because of it. . . it sickens me. It really does. And these are the people who are claiming to be doing God's work? Allowing people to die, when it could be prevented, in order to preserve some Church position that's based on outdated or outright incorrect information? How in the world can they justify that?

Okay, I've rambled long enough. I'm going to bed now.
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