There are a lot of people in this World who hold a deep faith of one kind or another. Christians, Jews, Hindus and others all know that their religion is a presentation of absolute truth.
How do these people know that they are right in their belief? The simple answer is that someone, the leadership of an organised religion, has told them so and then forbade anyone to question the presented view. Anyone who does is a heretic. The heads of varies religions validate their commands through an interpretation of one or more holy scriptures or even going as far as saying that omnipotent power is working through them. This system is deeply flawed.
Firstly the scriptures themselves were written at different times in different political, economic and social situations and thus for different reasons. The authors without a doubt came from different backgrounds and had very different writing styles. The bible is a good example of this. The bible consists of texts written thousands of years apart and brought together under instruction of a Roman emperor whose primary concern was to standardise the new state religion. It is thus improper to take the bible as is or to say that it is a coherent text. The Christian church gets around this by saying that God was working through the various writers and editors of the bible. how convenient?!
Second problem is that the various interpretations of holy texts themselves are greatly influenced by the interpreters’ context, political needs and background. For instance, most if not all religious rituals and traditions are either inventions or interpretations of earlier, in many cases earlier religions', ceremonies. Various ideas and beliefs, wholly invented, but said to be based on holy scriptures are taken as infallible. The Pope, for example. The whole church dogma becomes obviously illogical and irrational for the true believers because the church becomes disconnected from the original prophet or holy event and slowly creates its own, more self beneficial, set of rules and beliefs. Organised religions obscure this progression with a combination of indoctrination, lying, covering up and whitewashing the past.
Thus what often results in all organised religion is manipulation of people or simply lying to the worshipers for the benefit and enrichment of the establishment and bureaucracy of the religious order or its allies. The fundamental problem is that faith requires blind obedience, this is obviously leads to bad outcomes. If religious people really want to get closer to whoever they want to get closer to then they must learn to be more inquisitive and critical of their churches' leaders. Of course all of this reasoning is only true if God or whoever is not actually working through the various leaders. Looks like the faithful have some thinking to do.
How do these people know that they are right in their belief? The simple answer is that someone, the leadership of an organised religion, has told them so and then forbade anyone to question the presented view. Anyone who does is a heretic. The heads of varies religions validate their commands through an interpretation of one or more holy scriptures or even going as far as saying that omnipotent power is working through them. This system is deeply flawed.
Firstly the scriptures themselves were written at different times in different political, economic and social situations and thus for different reasons. The authors without a doubt came from different backgrounds and had very different writing styles. The bible is a good example of this. The bible consists of texts written thousands of years apart and brought together under instruction of a Roman emperor whose primary concern was to standardise the new state religion. It is thus improper to take the bible as is or to say that it is a coherent text. The Christian church gets around this by saying that God was working through the various writers and editors of the bible. how convenient?!
Second problem is that the various interpretations of holy texts themselves are greatly influenced by the interpreters’ context, political needs and background. For instance, most if not all religious rituals and traditions are either inventions or interpretations of earlier, in many cases earlier religions', ceremonies. Various ideas and beliefs, wholly invented, but said to be based on holy scriptures are taken as infallible. The Pope, for example. The whole church dogma becomes obviously illogical and irrational for the true believers because the church becomes disconnected from the original prophet or holy event and slowly creates its own, more self beneficial, set of rules and beliefs. Organised religions obscure this progression with a combination of indoctrination, lying, covering up and whitewashing the past.
Thus what often results in all organised religion is manipulation of people or simply lying to the worshipers for the benefit and enrichment of the establishment and bureaucracy of the religious order or its allies. The fundamental problem is that faith requires blind obedience, this is obviously leads to bad outcomes. If religious people really want to get closer to whoever they want to get closer to then they must learn to be more inquisitive and critical of their churches' leaders. Of course all of this reasoning is only true if God or whoever is not actually working through the various leaders. Looks like the faithful have some thinking to do.
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