10 Reasons You Should Never Have a Religion
While consciously pursuing your spiritual development is commendable,
joining an established religion such as Christianity, Islam, or
Hinduism is one of the worst ways to go about it. In this article I’ll
share 10 reasons why you must eventually abandon the baggage of
organized religion if you wish to pursue conscious living in earnest.
Since Christianity is currently the world’s most popular religion,
I’ll slant this article towards Christianity’s ubiquitous failings.
However, you’ll find that most of these points apply equally well to
other major religions (yes, even Buddhism).
1. Spirituality for dummies.
If you have the awareness level of a snail, and your thinking is
mired in shame and guilt (with perhaps a twist of drug abuse or suicidal
thinking), then subscribing to a religion can help you climb to a
higher level of awareness. Your mindset, however, still remains
incredibly dysfunctional; you’ve merely swapped one form of erroneous
thinking for another.
For reasonably intelligent people who aren’t suffering from major
issues with low self-esteem, religion is ridiculously
consciousness-lowering. While some religious beliefs can be empowering,
on the whole the decision to formally participate in a religion will
merely burden your mind with a hefty load of false notions.
When you subscribe to a religion, you substitute nebulous group-think
for focused, independent thought. Instead of learning to discern truth
on your own, you’re told what to believe. This doesn’t accelerate your
spiritual growth; on the contrary it puts the brakes on your continued
conscious development. Religion is the off-switch of the human mind. Leave the mythology behind, and learn to think for yourself. Your
intellect is a better instrument of spiritual growth than any religious
teachings.
2. Loss of spiritual depth perception.
One of the worst mistakes you can make in life is to attach your
identity to any particular religion or philosophy, such as by saying “I
am a Christian” or “I am a Buddhist.” This forces your mind into a fixed
perspective, robbing you of spiritual depth perception and savagely
curtailing your ability to perceive reality accurately. If that sounds
like a good idea to you, you’ll probably want to gouge out one of your
eyeballs too. Surely you’ll be better off with a single, fixed
perspective instead of having to consider two separate image streams…
unless of course you’ve become attached to stereo vision.
Religious “truths” are inherently rooted in a fixed perspective, but
real truth is perspective-independent. When you substitute religious
teachings for truth, you mistake shadows for light sources.
Consequently, you doom yourself to stumble around in the dark, utterly
confused. Clarity remains forever elusive, and the best answer you get
is that life is one giant mystery. Religious mysteries, however, arise
not from what is truly unknowable; they arise from the limitations of
trying to understand
reality from a fixed frame of reference.
A more intelligent approach is to consider reality through a variety
of different perspectives without trying to force your perceptions into
an artificial religious framework. If you wish to learn more about this
approach, read Spiritual Depth Perception.
3. Engineered obedience training.
Religions are authoritarian hierarchies designed to dominate your
free will. They’re power structures that aim to convince you to give
away your power for the benefit of those who enjoy dominating people.
When you subscribe to a religion, you enroll in a mindless minion
training program. Religions don’t market themselves as such, but this is
essentially how they operate.
Religions are very effective at turning human beings into sheep.
They’re among the most powerful instruments of social conditioning. They
operate by eroding your trust in your own intellect, gradually
convincing you to put your trust into some external entity, such as a
deity, prominent figure, or great book. Of course these instruments are
usually controlled by those who administrate the minion training
program, but they don’t have to be. Simply by convincing you to give
your power away to something outside yourself, religion will condition
you to be weaker, more docile, and easier to control. Religions actively
promote this weakening process as if it were beneficial, commonly
branding it with the word faith. What they’re actually promoting is submission.
Religions strive to fill your head with so much nonsense that your
only recourse is to bow your head in submission, often quite literally.
Get used to spending a lot of time on your knees because acts of
submission such as bowing and kneeling are frequently incorporated into
religious practice. Canine obedience training uses similar tactics. Now
say, “Yes, Master.”
Have you ever wondered why religious teachings are invariably
mysterious, confusing, and internally incongruent? This is no accident
by the way — it’s quite intentional.
By putting forth confusing and internally conflicting information,
your logical mind (i.e. your neocortex) is overwhelmed. You try in vain
to integrate such contradictory beliefs, but it can’t be done. The net
effect is that your logical mind disengages because it can’t find a
pattern of core truth beneath all the nonsense, so without the help of
your neocortex, you devolve to a more primitive (i.e. limbic) mode of
thinking. You’re taught that this faith-based approach is a more
spiritual and conscious way to live, but in reality it’s precisely the
opposite. Getting you to distrust your own cerebral cortex actually
makes you dumber and easier to manipulate and control. Karl Marx was
right when he said, “Religion is the opiate of the people.”
For example, the Old Testament and the New Testament in the Bible
frequently contradict each other with various rules of conduct, yet both
are quoted during mass. Church leaders also behave in direct violation
of the Church’s teachings, such as by covering up criminal and immoral
activities by their own priests. Those who try to mentally process such
glaring contradictions as coherent truth invariably suffer for it. A
highly conscious person would reject membership in such an organization
as patently ridiculous. So-called divine mysteries are engineered to be
incomprehensible. You aren’t meant to ever make sense of them since that
would defeat the whole purpose. When you finally wake up and realize
it’s all B.S., you’ve taken the first step towards freedom from this
oppressive system.
The truth is that so-called religious authorities don’t know any more
about spirituality than you do. However, they know how to manipulate
your fear and uncertainty for their own benefit. How nice of you to let
them.
Although the most popular religions are very old, L. Ron Hubbard
proved the process can be replicated from scratch in modern times. As
long as there are large numbers of people who fear the responsibility of
their
own power, religions will continue to dominate the landscape of
human development.
If you want to talk to God, then communicate directly instead of
using third-party intermediaries. Surely God has no need of an
interpreter. Don’t fall into the trap of becoming a mindless minion.
It’s a mistake to think that turning off your neocortex and practicing
mindless “faith” will bring you closer to God. In truth it will only
bring you closer to dog.
4. Toilet-bowl time management.
If you devote serious time to the practice of religion, it’s safe to say you practice toilet-bowl time management, flushing much of your precious life down the drain with little or nothing to show for it.
First, you’ll waste a lot of time filling your head with useless
nonsense. This includes reading some of the worst fiction ever written.
Then there are various rules, laws, and practices to learn.
Seriously, if you have insomnia, try reading religious texts before
bedtime. You’ll be asleep faster than you can say Methuselah. Why do you
think hotels put Bibles next to the bed? It’s the greatest sedative
known to man. I have to give props to the Scientologists for at least
incorporating space aliens into their stories. It’s a shame Gene Roddenberry didn’t formally invent his own religion; Stovokor sounds like a lot of fun.
Once you finally realize your head has been filled with utter
nonsense, you must then purge such garbage from your mind if you want
your brain to be functional again. That can take considerably longer,
assuming you succeed at all. It’s like trying to uninstall AOL from your
hard drive.
Next, you can expect to waste even more time on repetitive ritual and
ceremony, such as attending mass, learning prayers, and practicing
unproductive meditations.
If I add up the time I attended mass and Sunday school, studied
religion in school as if it were a serious subject, and memorized
various prayers, I count thousands of hours of my life I’d love to have
back. I did, however, learn some important lessons, many of which are
being shared in this article.
I especially remember listening to a lot of bad sermons; most priests
are hideously poor speakers. Maybe it’s because they drink alcohol
while on duty.
Now if you really go overboard and throw in learning a dead language for good measure, you can kiss years of your life goodbye.
The more time you devote to religious practice, the more you waste
your life on pointless, dead-end pursuits… and the more you’ll want to
delude yourself with a phony “Hehe, I meant to do that” attitude.
5. Support your local pedophile.
In addition to being a serious waste of time, religious practice can also be a huge waste of money.
For starters when you donate to a major religion, you support its
expansion, which means you’re facilitating the enslavement of your
fellow humans. That isn’t very nice, now is it? If you feel the urge to
donate money, give it to a real and honorable cause, not a fabricated
one. Better yet, go outside and do something that really helps people.
If you can’t think of anything better, grab a can of paint and clean up
some local graffiti.
Your religious donations fund freeloaders who mooch off society but
who generally provide little or no value in return. Sure there are some
religious people who perform valuable public services, but for the most
part, that isn’t their bailiwick. These freeloaders typically operate
tax-free, meaning they’re effectively subsidized by taxpayers. That’s a
great racket if you’re on the receiving side… not so great if you’re
funding it though.
Religions offer a suite of special services to generate additional
income. They’ll spout some gibberish while feeding you a crusty wafer,
pronounce you bonded to a fellow human being, snip some of your excess
skin, pour water on your head, proclaim your manhood, cast out your
demons, pronounce your transgressions forgiven, and so on. When they
can’t think of anything else, they make up some drivel like confirming
you’re still loyal to them. The bill may read “suggested donation,” but
it’s still a bill.
When you donate money to a religious organization, you’re doing much
worse than throwing your money away. You’re actively funding evil. If
you think that spending a billion dollars to defend pedophiles and
rapists is a good use of your hard-earned cash, perhaps you should run
for Pope. You could hardly do worse. At least Wall Street is honest
about its greed and lust.
One of my Catholic high school teachers was later revealed to be a
repeat child molester… written up in the newspaper and everything. I
didn’t see any suspicious behavior at the time, and to be totally
honest, I actually liked that teacher and was shocked to learn of his
extracurricular activities. He was shuffled from one location to another
by those who knew about his appetite for young flesh. I’m glad I wasn’t
on the menu, but I feel sad for those who were. Methinks God should
raise his standards… just a tad.
Why aren’t Catholic priests allowed to marry? This has nothing to do
with what’s written in the Bible or with any benefits of celibacy. This
rule was invented by the Church to prevent their priests from producing
heirs. When the priests died, their property would go back to the
Church, thereby enriching the rich even more. Apparently God needed more
cash. It was a very effective policy, as the Church is now among the
richest and most powerful organizations on earth. It’s hard to fail when
you have a loyal force of lifetime indentured servants who work cheaply
and then yield their life savings to you when they die.
Lay religious people (i.e. non-clergy), on the other hand, are
encouraged to have lots of babies because that means more people are
born into the religion, which means more money and a bigger power base.
Condoms are a big no-no; they’re bad for business. Marriage is a big
yes; it means more brainwashed babies will be made.
Would you seriously consider this sort of structure a “good cause” worthy of your hard-earned cash?
I have got to get me one of these…
6. Incest is best.
Religions frequently promote inbred social networks. You’re
encouraged to spend more time with people who share the same belief
system while disengaging from those with incompatible beliefs. Sometimes
this is done subtly; other times it’s more obvious.
If you’re one of the saved, blessed, or otherwise enlightened
individuals who stumbled upon the one true belief system, then
supposedly everyone else remains in the dark. Certain religions are
overtly intolerant of outsiders, but to one degree or another, all major
religions cast non-subscribers in a negative light. This helps to
discourage members from abandoning the religion while still enabling
them to proselytize. The main idea is to maintain social structures that
reward loyalty and punish freedom of thought.
This us-vs-them prejudice is totally incongruent with conscious
living. It’s also downright moronic from a global perspective. But it
remains a favored practice of those who pull the strings. When you’re
taught to distrust other human beings, fear gets a foothold in your
consciousness, and you become much easier to control.
When you join a religion, your fellow mind-slaves will help to keep
you in line, socially rewarding your continued obedience while punishing
your disloyalty. Why do they do this? It’s what they’ve been
conditioned to do. Tell your religious friends that you’re abandoning
their religion because you want to think for yourself for a while, and
watch the sparks fly. Suddenly you’ve gone from best friend to evil
demon. There’s no greater threat to religious people than to profess
your desire to think for yourself.
There are better ways to enjoy a sense of community than joining a
slavery club. Try making friends with conscious, free-thinking people
for a change — people who are willing to connect with you regardless of
how silly your beliefs are. You may find it intimidating at first, but
it’s quite refreshing once you get used to it.
Since I get asked this question all the time, I might as well answer
it publicly. Do I accept Jesus Christ as my personal savior? No more
than I’d accept a credit card from Crapital One. Either way I’d be
worried about the fine print. Does this mean we can’t be friends
anymore? Please don’t hate me because I’m doomed.
7. Idiocy or hypocrisy – pick one.
When you subscribe to an established religion, you have only two
options. You can become an idiot, or you can become a hypocrite. If
you’ve already chosen the former, I’ll explain why, and I’ll use small
words so that you’re sure to understand.
First, there’s the idiocy route. You can willingly swallow all of the
contrived, man-made drivel that’s fed to you. Accept that the earth is
only 10,000 years old. Believe stories about dead bodies coming back to
life. Learn about various deities and such. Put your trust in someone
who thinks they know what they’re talking about. Eat your dogma. Good boy!
Congratulations! You’re a moron
believer. You’ll be saved, enlightened, and greeted with tremendous
fanfare when you die… unless of course all the stuff you were taught
turns out not to be true. Nah… if the guy in the robe says it’s true, it
must be true. Ya gotta have faith, right?
Next, we have the hypocrisy option. In this case your neocortex is
strong enough to identify various bits of utter nonsense in the
religious teachings that others are trying to ram down your throat. You
have a working B.S. detector, but it’s slightly damaged. You’re smart
enough to realize that earth is probably a lot older than 10,000 years
and that pre-marital (or non-marital) sex is a lot of fun, but some B.S.
still gets through. You don’t swallow all the bull, but you still
identify yourself as a follower of a particular religion, most likely
because you were raised in it and never actually chose it to begin with.
To you it’s just a casual pursuit. You’re certainly not a die-hard
fundamentalist, but you figure that if you drink the wine and chew the
wafer now and then, it’s good enough to get you a free ride into a
half-decent afterlife. You belong to the pro-God club. Surely there’s
safety in numbers. Two people can’t be wrong… although 4-1/2 billion
supposedly can.
In this case you become an apologist for your own religion. You don’t
want to be identified with the extreme fanatics, nor do you want to be
associated with the non-believers. You figure you can straddle both
sides. On earth you’ll basically live as a non-practitioner (or a very
sloppy and inconsistent practitioner), but when you eventually die,
you’ve still got the membership card to show God.
Do you realize how deluded you are?
Perhaps if you have to throw out so much of the nonsense to make your
chosen belief system palatable, you shouldn’t be drinking the Kool Aid
in the first place. Free yourself from the mental baggage, stop looking
to others for permission to live, and start thinking on your own. If
your God exists, he’s smart enough to see through your fake ID.
From time to time, some of my readers take a stab at converting me to
their religion. Most of them come across as total loons, but I can at
least respect their consistency. I’ve no idea why they bother to read my
site (which is about raising, not lowering, consciousness). Perhaps
some of them are getting ready to convert from fundamentalism to common
sense.
You’d think I’d be quite a prize for any serious religion. With 2.4
million monthly readers, that’s a lot of people I could potentially enslave convert, not to mention how much I could fill the Church coffers by soliciting indulgences
donations on their behalf. Henceforth I expect a much better conversion
effort. If you won’t do it for the money, then do it for the souls. You
can’t let so many of us go to hell without trying in earnest to save
us, can you? 😉
Just keep those conversion emails below 10,000 words if possible,
with no more than 9,000 of them quoted from your favorite great book.
8. Inherited falsehood.
Please tell me you aren’t still practicing the religion you happened
to be born into? Surely you’ve outgrown your baby clothes by now. Isn’t
it time you also outgrew your baby religion?
What if you were born into a different culture? Would you have been
conscious enough to find your way back to your current belief system? Or
are your current beliefs merely a product of your environment and not
the result of conscious choice?
Many religions are just a mish-mash of what came before. For example,
Christianity is largely based on pagan rituals. If those pagan beliefs
and rituals had been protected by copyright, Christianity wouldn’t even
exist. If you take the time to dig into the roots of Christianity,
you’ll encounter various theories that Christianity’s teachings were
largely assembled from pre-Christian myths and that Jesus himself was
merely a fictional character pieced together from earlier mythical
figures. You go, Horus!
Many religious teachers (i.e. priests, rabbis, ministers, etc.) are
just brainwashed slaves themselves. They don’t have any real authority
and aren’t even aware of the agenda being set by their superiors. This
makes them better minions because they actually believe the B.S. they’re
spouting and don’t know the truth behind it. A priest, a rabbi, and a
minister walk into a bar, but that’s as far as they get. They may
interact with the bartender, but they never get to know the guy who owns
the bar. They suffer from inherited falsehood just like everyone else.
Is your religion based on the inspired word of God? No more than this
article. Just because someone says their text is divinely inspired
doesn’t mean it is. Anyone can claim divine inspiration. The top
religions are decided by popularity, not by truth.
Even the central figures in major religions didn’t follow the
religions that were spawned in their names. If they didn’t swallow the
prevailing “wisdom” about gods and spiritual leaders and such, why
should you? If you want to be more like the people you worship, then
follow their lead by striking out on your own.
Move beyond your baby religion. Consider maturity as a reasonable alternative.
9. Compassion in chains.
Religious rules and laws invariably hamper the development of
conscience. This causes all sorts of problems like pointless violence
and warfare. Those who preach nonviolence as a rule or law tend to be
the most violent of all. Such people cannot be trusted because they’ll
violate their proclaimed values with the weakest of excuses.
When you externalize compassion into a set of rules and laws, what
you’re left with isn’t compassion at all. True compassion is a matter of
conscious choice, and that requires the absence of force-backed rules
and laws.
The more religious a person becomes, the less compassionate s/he is.
The illusion of compassion substitutes for the real thing. Religious
people tend to be the most bigoted and non-accepting people on earth.
They’re the least trustworthy and suffer from the grossest character
defects. They pretend they’re doing good, but they’re really
collaborators in a system designed to push people into unconscious
slavery to a “higher” authority. They are slaves promoting slavery.
Historically speaking, religious people love to fight each other.
Instead
of unconditional love, they practice conditional loyalty. The
only unconditional aspect is their thirst for blood. If you disagree
with them, you’re a target… either for conversion or destruction (both
of which are really the same thing).
If you value the ideal of unconditional love, you won’t find it in
the practice of religion. Real compassion doesn’t arise from believing
in God, from practicing various rituals, or from studying the concept of
karma. Compassion can only result from conscious choice, and this
requires the freedom to choose without the threat of punishment or the
promise of reward. If you’re obedient to your faith, it’s a safe bet
that compassion is absent from your life. You probably don’t even know
what real compassion feels like.
The more we collectively abandon all religion, the better off this
planet will be. This doesn’t mean we have to abandon all spiritual
pursuits. It just means we must stop turning spirituality into something
it isn’t.
10. Faith is fear.
Religion is the systematic marketing of fear.
Blessed are the poor (donate heavily). Blessed are the meek (obey).
Blessed are the humble (don’t question authority). Blessed are the
hungry (make us rich while you starve). Blessed are the merciful (if you
catch us doing something wrong, let it go). Blessed are the pure of
heart (switch off your brain). Blessed are the timid, the cowardly, the
fearful. Blessed are those who give us their power and become our
slaves. Muahahaha!
That’s the kind of nonsense religion pushes on people. They train you
to turn your back on courage, strength, and conscious living. This is
stupidity, not divinity.
Religion will teach you to fear being different, to fear standing up
for yourself, and to fear being an independent thinker. It will erode
your self-trust by explaining why you’re unable to successfully manage
life on your own terms: You are unworthy. You’re a sinner. You’re
unclean. You belong to a lesser caste. You are not enlightened. Of
course the solution is always the same — submit to the will of an
external authority. Believe that you’re inadequate. Give away your
power. Follow their rules and procedures. Live in fear for the rest of
your life, and hope it will all turn out okay in the end.
When you practice faith instead of conscious living, you live under a
cloak of fear. Eventually that cloak becomes so habitual you forget
it’s even there. It’s very sad when you reach the point where you can’t
even remember what it feels like to wield creative freedom over your own
life, independent of what you’ve been conditioned to believe.
Faith is the coward’s substitute for courage. It’s also really good
marketing if you’re the one who controls the faith. If you’re afraid or
unwilling to assume total responsibility for your life, you’re a perfect
match for religion.
Fear in one part of your life invariably spreads to all other parts —
you can’t compartmentalize it. If you find yourself frustrated because
you’re too afraid to follow your dreams, to talk to members of the
opposite sex, to speak up for yourself, etc., then a good place to start
is to rid your life of all religious nonsense. Don’t let fear get a
foothold in your consciousness.
Stop trying to comfort yourself by swallowing religious rubbish. If
you really need something to believe in, then believe in your own
potential. Put your trust in your own intellect. Stop giving away your
power.
Dump the safety-in-numbers silliness. Just because a lot of people
believe stupid stuff doesn’t mean it isn’t stupid. It just means that
stupidity is popular on this planet. When people are in a state of fear,
they’ll swallow just about anything to comfort themselves, including
the bastion of stupidity known as religion.
Religion is spiritual immaturity. It’s entirely possible to enjoy your life without spending so much of
it bent over in submission. Pull your head out of your rear, and look
around with your own two eyes. If you need something to worship, then
feel grateful for your own conscious mind. Pull it out of the cobwebs,
and boot it up.
Besides… if some popular religious version of God does exist, there’s
a good chance he’s a complete and total idiot. He made us in his image,
right? So perhaps we shouldn’t be so quick to worship an entity so
lacking in intelligence. We’re better off on our own.
God isn’t going to smite you for not formally worshipping him. If he
didn’t smite me by now, it’s a safe bet you’ll slide beneath the radar
as well. And if that doesn’t work, you can borrow my fake ID. I’ve been
baptized and confirmed, and I’m the son of an altar boy and the nephew
of a priest, so I’m sure I’ll be fine. 😉
COMMENT:
I
am happy and contented to be an atheist. After all, God himself is an
atheist. Look at His
first commandment: THOU SHALL HAVE NO OTHER GODS
BEFORE ME.
Obviously, God does not believe in the existence of other Gods which makes Him an atheist.
So why should I bother to believe in a God who does not believe in the existence of other
Gods? - - - Poch Suzara