Smoke and Mirrors

If there's one thing I've learned in the last little while, it's that very little is actually what it seems. Often something that seems like a random detail is actually there to distract us from something bigger (or something huge will be staged to create support for something that people would otherwise protest). Of course everyone knows that this happens all the time in politics, but I believe that it happens just as much so in religion (actually the political and religious illusions often seem to distract us from the same things, just using their own unique methods).

There are various sorts of distractions in religion. One major type is "true doctrine," beliefs that aren't allowed to be questioned. Of course they are questioned, and debates occur and new denominations are formed (and heretics are persecuted in various ways). Meanwhile, in all the fighting for doctrinal purity, people miss out on what is really real and actually happening and not bothering to help change the things in the world that need changing.

Along the same lines, religious leaders (and certain scriptures) will often teach conflicting and contradictory beliefs (and often absurd stories and doctrines that logically can't be true) and insist that we must believe all of them. This creates cognitive dissonance in a religion's followers and induces compliance in them. Deep down they realize that what they have been told doesn't seem to make sense, but they trust that their leaders (or the writers of their scriptures) must know what they are talking about and if these things don't make perfect sense then they must not be smart enough to think for themselves and that they'd better just continue blindly doing and believing what they've been told.

Another type of religious distraction is "morality." Religious people are led to believe that God actually cares about things like what sorts of clothing you're wearing or what you're eating or drinking or whether certain synonyms come out of your mouth or whether you've watched a certain TV show or movie or read a certain book or that you've had sex with someone without being married to them (or that you might be the same gender as they are) or viewed images of nude people or whether you're working on a particular day of the week or whether you've attended a particular religious service or participated in a particular religious practice, to name just a few of the many hundreds of examples I could give. Religious "morality" is particularly insidious because it causes those who live (or try to live) "moral" lives to think that they're actually doing a good thing while keeping them distracted from doing and avoiding what really matters.

Ultimately, religion is one of the biggest smoke and mirror games played by the powers that be (human or otherwise). It keeps people so distracted from reality that they end up thinking harmless things are evil and harmful actions are good. It asks people to persecute heretics, apostates and other infidels in the name of their religion or deity (sometimes just in small ways like marginalizing them, but all too often with more violent methods as well), and to ignore (and sometimes even look down upon) those who are hurting and need assistance. I don't believe that any deity who was actually good would ask these things of us, so this means that any religion that asks us to take these illusions seriously is a lie and should be carefully avoided.

Ye Shall Know Them by Their Fruits

I have had people of various religions and denominations try to convince me that their set of doctrines are the truth and that if I don't follow their particular philosophy that I will come to a bad end (or at least not as good an end as I could). With so many different ideologies competing for my allegiance I had to find a way to determine which of them (if any) were likely to be true. Even just within the faith I grew up in, Christianity, there were too many contradictory sets of belief that I was being asked to affirm, nearly all of which could be defended from the Bible. When nearly every competing Christian claim is able be backed by the Bible it makes it very difficult to know which to accept so in the end I decided that I'd judge a doctrine or practice by its fruit.

What does this mean? It means that I look at what believing or practicing a particular theological belief or practice tends to lead to in its followers. When a religious belief causes people outside of that particular orthodoxy to be belittled, insulted, ostracized, persecuted, fired, censored, expelled from their homes and hometowns, beaten, robbed, imprisoned, tortured, raped, or even killed in the name of that religion (all things that do happen with the approval of certain religious leaders and teachings) it makes it pretty easy to determine that this particular viewpoint isn't at all positive and should be avoided. Also, if a religious group doesn't allow people inside that particular orthodoxy to think for themselves, but rather insists that they let their religious leaders determine what is true for them I know that something is fishy and that I should probably not have much to do with that particular group. If openly questioning (or even disagreeing with) a particular doctrine will get a member of a religious group in trouble then I know that this group is probably not to be trusted. And if a particular denomination insists (or even just asks) someone to do physical harm to them self or somebody else, be it some form of bodily mutilation or even suicide, run as far away from them as possible and never look back.

When it comes down to it, there are two sets of fruit that a theological paradigm tends to lead to. The first is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, and self-control. The second is fear, selfishness, peer pressure, intolerance, hostility, anti-intellectualism, arrogance, hypocrisy, and misery. If a doctrine or practice can be demonstrated to lead to the former then it sounds like something that should be embraced. If it has been shown to lead to the latter then I would think that it should be avoided if at all possible.