What Is Religion? And is it a good thing?

To quote the late Christopher Hitchens, ...

"Religion is not the belief that there is a god.

Religion is the belief that a god (or "God") tells you what to do".

I would have worded that a bit differently.

I would have said something like
"Religion is the belief that:
an independent sentience or mystical force 
which both greatly precedes and exceeds humanity
... is both entitled to parent us ...
and insists that we must submit to living under their rule via submitting to some HUMAN(s) who would rule over us as authorized agents or vessels.". 

However,
for the point, 
Hitchens' words were adequately phrased.

In reply, someone offered:

"Religion is sectarian and therefore divisive"
- Freddy Eduardo
In further agreement, I offer this:
Of course.

Although,
there are additional ways that both fundamentalist and moderate Christian sects are divisive.

To be fair, I am setting progressive, metaphorical, and "casual" versions of Christianity aside, 
so that they aren't "lumped in" with fundamentalists and moderates. 

I see serious problems with those groups too.
But those problems are different enough 
that they warrant separate considerations.

Meanwhile,
other religions are divisive too.
And all religions,
or, at least ... all religions I can think of right now ...
share SOME of those ways in common.

However,
since different religions also have their own unique ways of being divisive,  
I usually keep those discussions separate. 

For now, 
my points will be focused on how fundamentalist and moderate Christian sects are divisive.

I'll leave it up to the reader to identify examples that apply also to other religions.

Besides dividing humans into religious sects,
where each sects blames all the other sects for being in "the wrong sect", ...
They completely misunderstand what causes divergence of sects.
This leads them to demonize people, by assuming moral failings as the reason people end up in rival religious sects.

They also blame a "bad heart" for why anyone is an atheist;
or (with less disdain) agnostic,
or (with even less disdain) a deist. 

Basically,
the closer you get to a Christian's theology, 
the closer you get to being respectable. 

They also/additionally separate humans from each other and from themselves,
by preventing people from meeting themselves very deeply and truly.

People can only meet others
as deeply as they've met themselves.

Such religions sabotage that project in many ways. One of those ways is by displacing every member's "locus of identity".

They move a person's premise of 'self' away from being INTERNAL. When someone's locus of identity is internal, they define themselves FOR themselves. Thus, they provide personal value for themselves. This is essential to what it means to have "Stoic" ideals.
Whereas, all forms of religious fundamentalism,
along with their "moderates", 
take a stand AGAINST it.

Through psychological violence,
they displace a person's identity. 

How? And why?
By promoting (in fact, insisting upon) a conceptualized Super-Parent who says our identity and worth should come from them. They seek to replace your inner voice with their own. They seek to replace the essence of who you are ... with the essence of who they are. For that, they must kill the essence of you; so that an echo of themselves can move in and take your place. It's insidiously invasive. It is the attempted murder of WHO YOU ARE. It is the attempted THEFT of what remains. To accomplish this, they teach people to feel like they need validation from an always-hovering parent's approval. "He" becomes a crutch-of co-dependence, as the primary source from-which members derive their sense of identity and worth.

This is how they gain control over the people;
by gaining author-ship over their narrative of identity. 

This is why "author" is the root word in "authority".

It's about control. 

They want author's rights 
over your story.

In fact, 
it's worse than that.
Because in their view, you don't even GET your own story.
They have a story. And you're IN IT.

In that story, 
they want to tell you WHO you are 
and WHAT you're supposed to be doing.

And always,
just coincidentally, 
what your supposed to be doing ... 
is feeding their ego,
and elevating their social status.

 And if they've managed to get a job doing this, ...
you'll also be padding their nests with shiny bobbles. And thanking them for the privilege. 

This is why fundamentalist parents will respond to a de-converting adult-offspring ... by insisting that their child's identity remains property of (and thus, still defined by) the religious parent's narrative. 
 -as if their adult-offspring is STEALING God's property ... by trying to escape. 

The only reason that parent isn't "turning you in" to the Cosmic Sheriff (the greatest slave-trader to ever walk the earth)... is because they think "He sees all. He knows all. There's nowhere you can hide."
 
Otherwise,
they wouldn't stop at bullying you about it.
They would go to even greater lengths to "recover" his property. 

 Their loyalty is NOT to their own child. Because cult's don't allow true respect and love between members; not even between family members. 
 
 When we BASE our worthiness
for respect,
or to EXIST,
or to exist WELL (in good health) ...
on our relationship with "HIM", ...


That causes us to base everyone ELSE'S worth (or: absence of worth) on that same thing.

If THEY are "nothing without God", then YOU too are "nothing without God".

And by "God", they mean:

An approved relationship
with
their specific and exclusive conceptualization of "God". 

That foundation of personal-value 
effectively NULLIFIES their ability to see the true VALUE in people who aren't partakers in that "relationship". 

Granted,
that same religious mind
may say "I see great value in people who aren't in my faith".

However,
what that really means is:

They see great future-potential-value in "worldly" people. 

They're referring to an "infinitely positive value" that we can only graduate into if we join their "totally not a religion".

Let's not forget how those churches
relentlessly de-humanize,
and lump-together 
 outsiders as:
 "the world"
who is "wicked"
and due for destruction. 

In their "US vs THEM" religious paradigm, 
"the world" 
is expendable and disposable. 

Thus,
when they say something like
"we're all created in the image of God",
it's just a marketing gimmick. 

It does nothing to restore their ability to see our worth.

Why not?

Because PHYSICAL likeness is superficial. 

 It's also the foundation for color-based racism;
a form of racism created BY Christianity. 

 AESTHETIC MORALITY is an UN-EQUAL foundation of worth. 
 -Because beauty is in the eye of the beholder, 
and we do not all look the same.

In that context, they say "all humans are created in the image of God".
But it would mean we aren't "of EQUAL value", if we aren't equally seen as reflecting a
divine aesthetic. 

Meanwhile,
if, instead, a Christian arbitrarily decides to ascribe a "spiritual" meaning to the phrase "created in the image of God", 
that creates very similar problems.

"Spiritual" likeness (aka "godliness"; which means god-like-ness, or "like god")
was
(according to Bibles)
 GIVEN TO ADAM but NOT passed onto their descendants.

 It can only be re-gained via their exclusive "one true relationship";

which can only happen for people who join their "totally not a religion". 

Hence, even a "spiritual" meaning for the phrase "created in the likeness of God" does NOT mean they see your here-and-now-worth.
Because they're talking about the "new creation" from being "reborn" ... as Christians.

Either way,
all they've' really done is to create an artificial social construct ... which they use as a RACE;
 

 a master race.

The biblical Hebrews created ethno-religious racism.
They were the master race of their own theology. 

From out of that steaming pile of racist shit, ... 
a curiously pernicious weed emerged. 

Christianity;

 proposing a NEW master race.
 
This, of course, meant they had to become racists AGAINST the race they were trying to replace.
[a project which would eventually culminate in the Holocaust. 

Ultimately,
they failed to eradicate their ideological predeclares. 
But these aren't a race of quitters! 

They would later try again
to "get into position" for another crack at it;
in America's MAGA cult.] 

 Along the way, they got bored with purely ideological racism; deciding to make it more interesting and more exclusive ... by adding color-based racism to their theology.
 
Eventually, they decided to "cure" the color-based race-problem they created in the first place;  
-by returning to their roots ... of just using their exclusive religion as a race. 

 The core of that ideal remains the same.

 "If you aren't one of us, 
you don't deserve to exist". 

Meanwhile,
that "God" is really the alter-ego of religious "shepherds" (story-tellers, scribes, translators, preachers, peers, and parents).

"His" ego "rejoices(!) in mentally-parasitic control and resource-absorption;

leaching praise, profit, and power from
the sheep-minded, forever-children.

[Note to self.
Never, 
not ever again,
do a Google image search for parasites that infest humans] 

In those systems, their students acquire "learned helplessness". That, in turn, prevents captive minds from fully maturing into adulthood.
 
This video explains one of the ways they accomplish that. 

For that reason, sheepified people are being taught the lie that "by design" we were created to be: forever-unqualified to own and govern our own lives. Glorifying co-dependence; so that we can be 'intimately close' and 'glorifying' to that parent.
It's a conceptualized parent 
who does not understand what it means to be a good parent.
 Because a good parent is a parent who WANTS their children to outgrow their child-state dependencies. 

When someone (anyone) thinks it's wrong to even THINK ABOUT growing into adult-level autonomy for how they think, live, and love ...
that person will go out of their way to avoid it.

And they'll do whatever they can to ensure that their own children never risk it either. 

Religious opportunists, over thousands of years, have co-created "Him". "He" is a complex viral memetic. It's an ever-evolving and adapting mind-virus; spreading from each infected mind to the next. To facilitate that orchestrated religious pandemic, they built "educational" machinery to help them mentally inject that mental-technology into vulnerable minds.
"He" is a Puppet-King.

It's a contrived psychosocial construct which mortal men (and women) project their own voices through.
All the while, they PRETEND it is THEY who are HIS puppets.

Worse yet, ...

"He" meets all the Diagnostic Criteria for

1. Clinical Narcissistic Personality Disorder,

2. Sociopathy,
and

3. Machiavellianism.
[The unholy Trinity]

They are a "Father"
who plans to use "his children" (forever) as his ego's "supply".

-A "Father" who threatens "eternal discard" for those whom refuse to comply, ... and also for those whom fail to 'adequately' comply. 

-A "Father"
who sends his hive-minded sycophants out into the world ... as flying monkeys. The "bride of Christ".  
"Light of the world".

Love-bombing and fear-mongering.
Emotionally manipulative, habitually gaslighting, groomers and triangulators.
They call it "The Great Commission".

This seems at least a little honest;
about the fact they're being paid;

albeit with a forged IOU.

#Mercenaries4Jesus. 

They're pitting humans against all of their other human brothers and sisters,
in the name of an artificial "righteousness".


Both passively and aggressively
helping to tear our world apart.

Generating MISERY 
[not ALL human misery; but much MORE than we'd have otherwise].

It helps them to sell the STORY of a "fallen world" 
 to "rescue" survivors from.

You're not supposed to NOTICE it would be a gross conflict of interests 
for a "God" to:

1. create MOST tragedies,

and then
2. send his people 
out into the world 
to make it WORSE, 

and then
3. blame "wicked humans" for 100% of the world's problems. 
 -as if our "sins" were creating earthquakes, tornadoes, mosquitos, bibles, and flesh-eating bacteria. 
 Ok, well, maybe bibles.

If he had been literally real,
there would NEVER be a way to positively identify even a single example of tragedy that was entirely "man made". 

In fact,
it wouldn't even be possible for such an event to happen;
because every single failing humans have ... 
are,
according to Bibles, 
"by design". 

Humans 
did not choose which failings humans would have.

He isn't literally real.
But religious minds are real.
They exist.
And they've been fucking shit up since even before they started making excuses for it. 

Fueling and fanning the fires of destruction
 which consume so many lives ...
 helps them sell fraudulent Afterlife-insurance
to panicked buyers. 

Just like "Big Pharma",

Churches
are all
very-well-aware:

You can't sell "rescue"
to people who are doing fine. 




-Every church, in endless competition with all rival factions, claim to speak for the "Father".

But they never accept personal responsibility for the harm done by their preachments; -such as all the LGBT youth (including young children) who are driven to SUICIDE because of what many churches teach.
They never accept personal responsibility for the harm done by fostering social inequality. -such as the inequality inherent to the idea where one person's voice carries greater moral 'weight' than someone else's; because of the premise that they speak by divine authority. -Or the inequality inherent to falsely-identified differences of "ability", "nature", and "roles" between men and women; allegedly intended by God. They never accept responsibility for placing an ABUSIVE "Father" over children, and then saying "this is what LOVE looks like".

All of that is especially consequential, when you consider ... It results in countless many young adults rushing into domestic abusive "marriages". Those churches also work hard to assure abused mates will STAY in those relationships; at least long enough to sabotage yet another generation of children. -And sometimes even long enough to get themselves killed.

Nor do they accept personal responsibility done by being (and supporting) global colonizing religions. Nor do they accept personal responsibility for how RECKLESS it is to build, maintain, and legitimize a PEDESTAL of "unquestionable authority" that literally any predator can casually step up onto. Every "good man" and every "bad man" in the churches wield POWER in the name of an "authority" which literally NO HUMAN has ever been qualified to wield.

It's a "Father"
who wants to make sure his child-brides never grow up enough to realize how sick that relationship is.
They won't even realize how it's making them and all of their human relationships un-well.
--

They also further divide humans from each other (and from themselves) by demonizing natural and healthy facets of human psychology; including sexual psychology.
--

Those religious factions have also created further divisions by CAUSING mental illness. How do they cause mental illness? One way is by causing prolonged and extreme anxiety. They cause prolonged anxiety in various ways. One of those ways is by creating dire fear of extreme and eternal consequence ... for being "not correct enough" about God; both in terms of HOW THEY LIVE and even WHAT THEY THINK.
That problem is greatly worsened by creating fears that a literal "rapture", or any other sudden end of all "chances" to "get right with God". ... could happen "any second now"'. Another way they create mental illness is by instilling self-loathing.

Another way is via domestic abuse; committed by parents or husbands,
on the basis of divine entitlement.

Those men presume to be entitled 
to act like they OWN those children
and are entitled to "rule over" their wives. 

Now, I ain't here to kink-shame.

For every women out there who WANTS to be a trad-wife,
I fully support that.

But for a male-dominated religious organization to TELL all girls and women that the creator of the universe INSISTS that's a woman's "place"?
 That is some fucked up shit. 

To further compound the problem, such churches literally demonize mental illness; by incorrectly identifying such illness as either "spiritual immaturity" or "spiritual sickness".
That, in turn, leads to blaming the mentally-ill for their own struggles. .
That, in turn, 
dissuades compassion for the afflicted.

 In fact, it can (and often does) serve as a premise for families and community to DISTANCE themselves from the afflicted; based on the idea that the "spiritually unwell" are a spiritual threat to everyone around them. 
 Although, they do the same thing to atheists and people in other religions. 
It's a truly heinous way to treat family. 

Misidentifying mental illness also dissuades rational investigation and realistic remedy.  
In fact, those religions are exactly WHY humanity is not much further along in our collective scientific understanding of mental illness; 
and thus our ability to prevent, treat, and cure such illnesses. 

 -Due to all the years they spent dissuading so many humans from pouring essential people-power and money INTO those scientific inquires. 

Those religions 
went to great lengths
... to misidentify mental illness as "spiritual immaturity" and "spiritual sickness".
 
Consider too,
all the time those churches spent convincing countless-many people that there was no POINT in trying to cure those problems (nor any other problems humanity is dealing with)
because the literal "end of the world" was always about to happen; 
any day now.
   --
Now, 
look around.

See all the tragedies we COULD HAVE BEEN
and very-probably would have been 
preventing, 
if those churches (most churches; for thousands of years)
had helped MORE 
and interfered LESS. 


As the world burns, ...

and as members are systematically incapacitated, ...

it deepens their dependence on their church. 

 The weaker they become,
the more they need that crutch.

Over time, they become completely convinced "we're not designed to be stronger than this".

They become institutionalized.

They end up celebrating their co-dependent disability;

learned helplessness ... 
as a virtue. 

They think "this is how we are meant to live.
I am so blessed to have such a GOD to rely upon".