“If humanity has a future, religion will have no part in it; but if humanity has no future, religion will surely have a part in that.”
– Rob Cotton
I started this post by quoting myself in the spirit of all that is holy about my blog. Let us not forget that without me, your creator Lord, this blog would not exist; and insomuch as this blog is a sorta-kinda universe all unto itself, an entire universe would thus not even so much as crumble, but evaporate, simply based upon my whims and fancies (or maybe I got hit by a bus or something and the payment account eventually dried up).
We think of religion as a complicated subject, and it is, but not really in the ways we sometimes think. The philosophies themselves are mostly basic and stupid. They’re complicated because of the way they infiltrate and infect the minds of adherents, compelling them to act out in ways and believe things that contradict what should be their very base and obvious instincts for survival; a kind of madness.
We should be focused on that: the way in which these ideologies that we call religions function in the minds of those who believe, so that we can understand the very real madness they often engender; madnesses which sometimes result in extreme lashings out by those infected with the religious virulence.
Look, I get the desire to live and let live, let people think what they want to think. It’s a noble thought. Unfortunately, we live in reality, and in reality, we do not confront problematic ideologies by pretending they’re something other than what they very directly and specifically are. We confront problematic ideologies by confronting them and challenging them with the goal of weeding them out.
It’s okay to take a philosophical stand against ideas. It’s okay to take a forceful stand against ideas that are being used as instruments of power and destruction. It is certainly okay to reject ideologies one determines to be of negative value to the progress of our species. This is called philosophy, and religions should not be exempt from the rigors of philosophy just because some people have warm and fuzzy feelings about them.