Erica The Dictator On Religion

For over a decade now I've playfully toyed with the idea that one day I'd become dictator for the purpose of evaluating whether certain political or sociological ideas would work for the masses rather than just evaluating them at an individual level. Silly, but it makes the exercise fun and allows me to sneak "when I become dictator" into conversation.

Now that I've completed PaulHarrison1976's videos on The Word of Faith Movement and Prosperity Gospel and moved onto the Faith Healing and Televangelism Series I've started thinking about religion as if I was the dictator. How would I rule?

As a person with a feeling that there's a small chance (less than 50%) that there's a non-personal god out there somewhere ruling on religion is hard. I'm sure Dawkins and Hitchens would just turn churches into museums and teach religion as a fictional, silly thing we used to believe in before science came along with REAL answers.

But I recognize in friends and family a real NEED for religion. My Mom was turned off by the church's greed and stopped going for 20 years because of it. But she always believed and tried hard to raise me as a believer as well. But it just never made sense to me. While she found comfort in religion's answers that required faith, and a plan, and the fallback of "tests" when it all seemed to come crashing down, I just couldn't get over the inconsistencies. As she found comfort in Him watching over her at all times, it felt creepy to me. And she found ways around the uncomfortable parts like her belief (against the church) that all good people go to heaven, not just the ones who go to church and believe in Jesus and all that.

Because of our seemingly innate differences in reaction to religion and hearing the stories of friends and strangers like PaulHarrison1976 online as well as reading some of the research coming out about finding ares of the brain linked to belief and religious experiences, I've come to build a hypothesis that religion cannot be done away with. Some people need it, so clearly something besides abolishing it must be done.

So do I choose a religion for everyone to go with? Invent one? Allow total freedom for all religions?

Looking beyond the individual and focusing on society as a whole, I do see organized religion as a problem. Here I can only talk about Christianity because it's all I have any experience with, but from what I've seen it appears to relate to all. The foundation of organized religion -those ideas you think about first are often: "Love thy neighbor", "Do unto others as you'd have done unto you", "Honor thy mother and father", "Thou shall not kill", and so on. All good messages, of use to any society, non-exclusionary, and fairly universally agreed upon.

It's not until you get to religious organizations that you start getting to the more troublesome aspects of religion: pressure to recruit new members, asserting that THEY are the only true faith and others will be eternally punished, and the false assertion that they know the mind of God (Pope John Paul said there WAS a "limbo", the new guy says there's not -did God change his mind? is one of them wrong and therefore not really talking to God? or has it always been more about their own personal opinions and no one really knows the true mind of God?).

So, I've recently realized that it's that hierarchy that I have an issue with. Once you put a person at the front of the congregation speaking FOR God you've given that person some power because, generally, the people who attend church go to hear the sermon and never cross-check what they hear in that big book with the funny words. Even I tried to sit down and read it, but I didn't get farther than the 2nd creation story. The language in Shakespeare doesn't bother me, but add to it the fact that I just couldn't make much sense out of the stories and my interest faded fast. Even if a person reads the Bible and listens to the preacher, they're more likely to believe the preacher than the book because they are likely to not have much confidence in their reading comprehension as far as the Bible goes, and because he's had years in seminary school to pour over the text and learn about the different translations, etc.

And if the man in the front of the room has power, what about Cardinals and Popes? And what about the money that it takes for this non-profit organization to employ not only that preacher, but that Cardinal, Pope, school, etc. They need a lot of donations to keep their organization running. And that drives the need for membership via "Soul Saving", and the fear that if your friends and family are of a different faith, then you won't be seeing them in the afterlife, they'll be burning in hell (unless, of course, you recruit them).

And that's why religion is unsavory to me, but what's the fix? A non-hierarchal religion of some sort where the power lies in the individual instead of the organization. PaulHarrison1976 is starting to look into the Unitarian Universalist church which, from his description, sounds like a very cool and very nice answer to this question. It's a church that's run like a Democracy that allows individuals to take what works for them in the Christian and/or Jewish tradition, and add or subtract other ideas to their liking. Each person's personal beliefs are respected. Now that sounds more like "Love thy neighbor" doesn't it?

So, to sum up: When I become Dictator, you'll get to choose between Atheism, Agnosticism, or the UUA. I've spoken ;-).