Also good about visiting the sick and shut ins.
Some might say that is using religion wrongly. Kind of like using a weapon to kill someone. Is it the person or the weapon?
I’d reply that a weapon has legitimate uses. You could hunt or defend yourself; doesn’t have to be murder.
Religion doesn’t have an alternate purpose. At all.
There’s literally nothing positive that you can’t already do without it, so it doesn’t serve a purpose, per se. You can’t tell me that spirituality serves a necessary function of feeding the homeless, or clothing the needy, or any other altruistic thing. If you open your eyes and mind you’d see that all of that stuff can be done just simply by itself. And people who don’t believe in ghost stories do great things all the time. You might not take that into account since you think non believers are heathens, but it’s true.
Look man, myths and spirituality happened because early humans didn’t have an understanding of the natural world and wanted to know why they were alive. So they dreamt shit up and passed it on down the line as fairy tales. The only thing that distinguishes the early ones from the modern ones like Islam, Christianity, Judaism, etc., is the level of complexity. It’s Cat In The Hat vs. Moby Dick. They’re both total bullshit fiction, but one sounds more convincing because it’s more complicated.
Then
organized religion came along—created by people—to do two things...1) comfort people who are so feeble-minded that they can’t come to grips with the possibility of no “afterlife”—the idea that when you croak the lights just go out and that’s it, and 2) to control people.
What better way for kings and priests to control the illiterate peasantry than to tell them scary ghost stories about how the big dude created them all, he’s watching, and if you don’t follow the goofy instruction manual, depending on which “religiaflavor” you eat that you’re going to either burn up for eternity or not get an afterlife?
That’s it, man. Control, and a drug so you don’t have to face the fact that at some point you’re gonna die and everything will just shut off and go dark like you were never there. I assume you’re a jesus guy, maybe I’m wrong, but did you ever ask yourself why you believe that horse pucky? Say what you want, but you and I both know it’s because either A. you got convinced by some evangelist that you needed to join their cult lest you lose your soul, or B. the last 10 generations of your family told each successive one that they had to go to church. Guess what...the same thing would have happened had you been born in Syria or India or Israel or the US. The only thing different would be the particular ghost story depending on where you live.
You wanna help someone? Just do it then. You don’t need some fake thing that you know deep down is just a made up yarn from a thousand years ago. If someone told you they thought hobgoblins were a real thing and that they had a conversation with one you’d call the looney bin and wouldn’t let them near your kids. But if somebody told you he was at home last night and had a personal talk with Jesus and it changed the direction of his life, and he felt the power come over him, you’d think, “Wow! What an amazing experience! That pastor is someone I’d leave my kids alone with and let him help guide their lives down the right path!” You see how goddamn dumb that is? I don’t know about you, but I’m sticking with unicorns and fairies because I’m pretty sure those aren’t gonna rape a kid or cut someone’s head off because they read the wrong book.
The amount of good this garbage has done building Habitat houses or giving shoes to kids in Zimbabwe is waaaaaaaaaay offset by all the killing and torturing and enslaving throughout time. The sooner people realize it’s a sham (luckily it’s declining more and more everyday) the better.
One last word...I don’t hate you, I wouldn’t do anything to F with you, and I’m a pretty fun dude to hang out with. I also don’t think you individually would do anything bad. I just think the shit you believe is crazy and that on a macro scale it’s a big net negative on humanity.
