sindex.1983
Helpful Friendly Advice
If religions didn't exist, what would the world be like?
Before we answer that, let's examine some general character properties of people who choose to believe in their respective religions:
1. Religious believers engage in faith. They use their imagination to visualize a story that they have been told previously (nobody was born believing in Jesus or Allah or Buddha, etc.), and using apprehension of that mental image, they take that instead of actual proof that the belief system they have adopted is, in fact, actually real.
2. Religious believers support their organizational communities. Christians gather for Christian gatherings, Muslims for Muslim gatherings, and so forth. In other words, all of these people are able to set aside regular times in their lives that they can devote to any activity that their organization deems fit.
3. Religious believers engage in frequent ritualistic behavior both on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly cycle. While it's true that all humans have adopted some form of ritual in their lives (though it can vary widely as to exactly what it is and why), religious believers elevate the rituals that have been taught to them by their religious organization to a high status of importance in their lives, thereby imagining that they have a duty, a responsibility, to always perform these rituals at the set times (and places, in some cases).
Those three points should be sufficient to demonstrate my argument.
Now, let's re-examine those three points. Let's imagine the same group of people - religious believers, as they exist today at this moment - but let's strip them of their religious beliefs.
If we stripped religious believers of their religious beliefs somehow without offending them, what kind of people would they be?
1. Schizophrenic, or at the very least psychotic. This sort of mental activity is a holdover from childhood, when you can't distinguish what is real in your daydreaming from what is real in the physical reality shown to you through your senses. Without some form of storybook to latch onto, imagine the chaos these people would cause! Each of them would instead latch onto a different story - a story that is more uniquely tailored to them, since in our hypothetical scenario there are no religious institutions to feed them systematic belief structures anymore - and so, every one of these former religious believers, would now be clinging to some deluded fantasy of their own making, rather than conforming to one made by many people over a long period of time.
2. While we're not about to indulge in religious beliefs ourselves, the old adage "idle hands are the devil's workshop" seems to fit here. These people, now devoid of a story fed to them from an institution seeking to corrupt, degrade and enslave their wills, must instead fend for themselves! Again, we find ourselves in a precarious position. We're not talking about a handful of people here - there are unimaginably vast flocks of human beings out there who believe in this stuff. Each one of them, when attending religious gatherings, had time, attention, money, etc. extracted from them, at least a little bit - but it adds up over a lifetime! Imagine that, now, since all these former religious believers no longer engage in these regular gatherings, what will they put all these resources to, now that they are free of their former mental shackles? Well, if we remember that in point 1, these people are schizoid/psychotic, then it stands to reason that a good portion of them will engage in activities that will undermine society rather than support it. Why? Well it just stands to reason that they would do that, because all the major world religions preach against the 'evil' of Man, his 'evil' society, and all the 'Evil' that lurks around just about every corner. Would dropping their belief systems make them drop the paranoid fantasy of constant persecution? The answer is no. This fantasy is part of the reason these people are in religion in the first place - they're magnetized to the message, because in some small way they subconsciously agree with it, even if it's for different reasons that they aren't aware of. These people like to amalgamate their negative feelings into a dense mixture with no discernible cause in their minds; then they point their finger at an imaginary boogeyman like "Satan" and blame him for all the bad feelings inside them. They may have been hard done by in some way - mistreated - at some times in their lives, and decide that these occurrences are representative of some force of 'Evil' that has come to persecute them. Truly, if there is one constant across the vulgar masses of mankind, it is superstition, so the conjecture that makes up this point should be solid enough.
3. Imagine that, since all the rituals of these former believers have now been tossed out, what will these people do? Will they stop praying at every meal? Will they stop wearing head-scarves? Will they stop bowing in the dirt, singing nonsensical praises to the ceiling, and chanting mantras and slogans? The answer is no; at least, they may stop doing the things I just listed, but in the stead of those things they will probably adopt equally, if not increasingly, crazy things to do. Think about the first principles of this mentality. These people are already acting in a robotic fashion in their real (non-hypothetical case) state right now. You think that's just going to disappear the moment religion disappears? Ha! The function of these people is best considered through the archetype they represent. This archetype I'm referring to is that of a person whose logical centre in the brain does not function adequately to sustain what could be considered a rational viewpoint from the perspective of one whose logical centre does function properly. I'm not calling this a malfunction; don't get me wrong - they are born to be this way; this is what they are. Well, consider points 1 and 2 before you consider this further: We have schizoid/psychotic people, with lots of free time and resources available, engaging in all manner of random exploit due to the vast size of the sample population of religious believers. On top of that, they all like to engage in rituals that bear none of the results that they think they do; and then, when they start to feel bad (generally because their life isn't yielding the results they would like to see) they are mentally balkanized within - confusion sets in. More randomness piled on randomness - and what does that lead to? Well, apart from a lot of really weird harmless stuff, it also results in a lot of violent crazies with the will to do harm to others. An extremist is going to be an extremist, whether they are religious, or not; their extreme, radical plans and actions are simply going to be based on a different set of ideas.
To sum those three up quickly - these people are ruled by sentimentality and dull imagination, which is what makes them prime candidates for being believers in religion. Religion neutralizes the potentially lethal consequences that these mental elements in the equation of every religious believer might cause.
Ok? I'm much happier with these people all yoked together in a common religious belief system. Much less chaos. The idea of these people being free to think and choose for themselves is utterly absurd. They can't do that. They can barely choose in their own best interests, let alone consider the repercussions of their actions on society at large. Sure, maybe 90% of these former religious believers will ultimately be benign wackos with no negative impact on things. That leaves 10%, la crème du la crème of the crazy, unleashed to just develop insane plans and try to execute them against their perceived 'evil'. Makes me shudder. I don't know about you, but I'm happier with religion keeping these people bound up and tied!
Thank you, creators and owners of all religion!
P.S. Now I know there's going to be a good deal of you saying, "Wait - isn't the West at war with religious extremists?" Yes, it is. War is another issue completely. I will point out to you that the vast majority of Muslims are not engaging in extremist behaviors, just the same as members of other major religious institutions. What we are seeing here in the modern world is a war between interests, using their pawns to fight a battle - the battle is what the world sees, not its true cause. The pawns believe something is being accomplished in the world. What is really happening is a delicate shift in the balance of geopolitical power, that's all. It's economic and it's political underneath the cheap veneer of a war against 'terrorists' (give me a break). Abolishing Islam from the world wouldn't end this war, because Islam is just a pack of lies like the other religions; human hands are fighting the war. These people are violent and they want to be violent. If there never was an Islam - or any other faith for that matter - they would be violent anyway, provided the circumstances of their lives were similar enough with Islam gone.
Religion is a convenient wrapper to twist around and bind up the minds of crazed savages and hopeless mental derelicts. May all religions stand so long as these insane folk are around, in order to keep us safe from them!
Before we answer that, let's examine some general character properties of people who choose to believe in their respective religions:
1. Religious believers engage in faith. They use their imagination to visualize a story that they have been told previously (nobody was born believing in Jesus or Allah or Buddha, etc.), and using apprehension of that mental image, they take that instead of actual proof that the belief system they have adopted is, in fact, actually real.
2. Religious believers support their organizational communities. Christians gather for Christian gatherings, Muslims for Muslim gatherings, and so forth. In other words, all of these people are able to set aside regular times in their lives that they can devote to any activity that their organization deems fit.
3. Religious believers engage in frequent ritualistic behavior both on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly cycle. While it's true that all humans have adopted some form of ritual in their lives (though it can vary widely as to exactly what it is and why), religious believers elevate the rituals that have been taught to them by their religious organization to a high status of importance in their lives, thereby imagining that they have a duty, a responsibility, to always perform these rituals at the set times (and places, in some cases).
Those three points should be sufficient to demonstrate my argument.
Now, let's re-examine those three points. Let's imagine the same group of people - religious believers, as they exist today at this moment - but let's strip them of their religious beliefs.
If we stripped religious believers of their religious beliefs somehow without offending them, what kind of people would they be?
1. Schizophrenic, or at the very least psychotic. This sort of mental activity is a holdover from childhood, when you can't distinguish what is real in your daydreaming from what is real in the physical reality shown to you through your senses. Without some form of storybook to latch onto, imagine the chaos these people would cause! Each of them would instead latch onto a different story - a story that is more uniquely tailored to them, since in our hypothetical scenario there are no religious institutions to feed them systematic belief structures anymore - and so, every one of these former religious believers, would now be clinging to some deluded fantasy of their own making, rather than conforming to one made by many people over a long period of time.
2. While we're not about to indulge in religious beliefs ourselves, the old adage "idle hands are the devil's workshop" seems to fit here. These people, now devoid of a story fed to them from an institution seeking to corrupt, degrade and enslave their wills, must instead fend for themselves! Again, we find ourselves in a precarious position. We're not talking about a handful of people here - there are unimaginably vast flocks of human beings out there who believe in this stuff. Each one of them, when attending religious gatherings, had time, attention, money, etc. extracted from them, at least a little bit - but it adds up over a lifetime! Imagine that, now, since all these former religious believers no longer engage in these regular gatherings, what will they put all these resources to, now that they are free of their former mental shackles? Well, if we remember that in point 1, these people are schizoid/psychotic, then it stands to reason that a good portion of them will engage in activities that will undermine society rather than support it. Why? Well it just stands to reason that they would do that, because all the major world religions preach against the 'evil' of Man, his 'evil' society, and all the 'Evil' that lurks around just about every corner. Would dropping their belief systems make them drop the paranoid fantasy of constant persecution? The answer is no. This fantasy is part of the reason these people are in religion in the first place - they're magnetized to the message, because in some small way they subconsciously agree with it, even if it's for different reasons that they aren't aware of. These people like to amalgamate their negative feelings into a dense mixture with no discernible cause in their minds; then they point their finger at an imaginary boogeyman like "Satan" and blame him for all the bad feelings inside them. They may have been hard done by in some way - mistreated - at some times in their lives, and decide that these occurrences are representative of some force of 'Evil' that has come to persecute them. Truly, if there is one constant across the vulgar masses of mankind, it is superstition, so the conjecture that makes up this point should be solid enough.
3. Imagine that, since all the rituals of these former believers have now been tossed out, what will these people do? Will they stop praying at every meal? Will they stop wearing head-scarves? Will they stop bowing in the dirt, singing nonsensical praises to the ceiling, and chanting mantras and slogans? The answer is no; at least, they may stop doing the things I just listed, but in the stead of those things they will probably adopt equally, if not increasingly, crazy things to do. Think about the first principles of this mentality. These people are already acting in a robotic fashion in their real (non-hypothetical case) state right now. You think that's just going to disappear the moment religion disappears? Ha! The function of these people is best considered through the archetype they represent. This archetype I'm referring to is that of a person whose logical centre in the brain does not function adequately to sustain what could be considered a rational viewpoint from the perspective of one whose logical centre does function properly. I'm not calling this a malfunction; don't get me wrong - they are born to be this way; this is what they are. Well, consider points 1 and 2 before you consider this further: We have schizoid/psychotic people, with lots of free time and resources available, engaging in all manner of random exploit due to the vast size of the sample population of religious believers. On top of that, they all like to engage in rituals that bear none of the results that they think they do; and then, when they start to feel bad (generally because their life isn't yielding the results they would like to see) they are mentally balkanized within - confusion sets in. More randomness piled on randomness - and what does that lead to? Well, apart from a lot of really weird harmless stuff, it also results in a lot of violent crazies with the will to do harm to others. An extremist is going to be an extremist, whether they are religious, or not; their extreme, radical plans and actions are simply going to be based on a different set of ideas.
To sum those three up quickly - these people are ruled by sentimentality and dull imagination, which is what makes them prime candidates for being believers in religion. Religion neutralizes the potentially lethal consequences that these mental elements in the equation of every religious believer might cause.
Ok? I'm much happier with these people all yoked together in a common religious belief system. Much less chaos. The idea of these people being free to think and choose for themselves is utterly absurd. They can't do that. They can barely choose in their own best interests, let alone consider the repercussions of their actions on society at large. Sure, maybe 90% of these former religious believers will ultimately be benign wackos with no negative impact on things. That leaves 10%, la crème du la crème of the crazy, unleashed to just develop insane plans and try to execute them against their perceived 'evil'. Makes me shudder. I don't know about you, but I'm happier with religion keeping these people bound up and tied!
Thank you, creators and owners of all religion!
P.S. Now I know there's going to be a good deal of you saying, "Wait - isn't the West at war with religious extremists?" Yes, it is. War is another issue completely. I will point out to you that the vast majority of Muslims are not engaging in extremist behaviors, just the same as members of other major religious institutions. What we are seeing here in the modern world is a war between interests, using their pawns to fight a battle - the battle is what the world sees, not its true cause. The pawns believe something is being accomplished in the world. What is really happening is a delicate shift in the balance of geopolitical power, that's all. It's economic and it's political underneath the cheap veneer of a war against 'terrorists' (give me a break). Abolishing Islam from the world wouldn't end this war, because Islam is just a pack of lies like the other religions; human hands are fighting the war. These people are violent and they want to be violent. If there never was an Islam - or any other faith for that matter - they would be violent anyway, provided the circumstances of their lives were similar enough with Islam gone.
Religion is a convenient wrapper to twist around and bind up the minds of crazed savages and hopeless mental derelicts. May all religions stand so long as these insane folk are around, in order to keep us safe from them!
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