People have strong religious beliefs but I argue that this “strong” belief is actually a weakness.
Everyone has a right to their beliefs and whatever religion they believe in. This is a fundamental principle of democracy and one that I wholly support. As long as your belief doesn’t bring harm to anyone, I respect your believe it.
Having said that, I consider religion to be a weakness. And by religion I mean every religion and every branch of every religion. This includes Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Scientology.
Why would I say this? Because I believe religious people fall into two categories – those who have it drummed into them from childhood and those who are converted. We will examine these two types of religious zealot later on but first it’s necessary to define the nature of religion itself.
Religion is the belief in one or more mythical, almighty, power beings that possess powers beyond the comprehension of a normal person. This sounds somewhat harsh but nonetheless true – it’s inarguable that there is no proof of an existence of an almighty being other than in the collective mindset of the religious devotees.
In less enlightened times, religion served two purposes – it helped to make sense of the world because it explained the inexplicable (God’s will being the answer to most things!) and it allowed those in the upper echelons of society to control those below them (normally by saying they were appointed to their position by God or that they were living Gods).
There are many people, in virtually all religions, who have their belief system thrust upon by their parents. I was “christened” as a Roman Catholic and so was my brother. The reason for this is that my mother is a Roman Catholic and being from an Irish family so were her parents and their parents and so on. The Roman Catholic belief system was forced upon them by generations and they have never thought to question it.
This happens in other religions – we see Moslem children brought up by their parents to be Muslim, Jewish children brought up by their parents to be Jews and so forth.
These people are weak because they never seem to question their religion, or if they do they don’t question it deeply enough. The reason I say this is because they continue to believe it and anyone who questions religion will actually find that their religion does not hold the answers.
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