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Originally Posted by Boogster
Righto. This is where you lose me. I'm just not sure how you justify your reaction to organised religion. It doesn't seem wholly rational to generalise in such a narrow fashion. Do you honestly believe that every religious leader in the world is some kind of machiavellian despot? After giving it some thought, can you even be sure that the majority of religious leaders are manipulative obligarchs? How many religious people in positions of authority do you know personally?
I'm interested: do you also, for example, think that all poor people steal? That all girls wear pink? That no politician ever has good intentions? Yahwe has already helpfully reminded us of those hazy greys that cloud our moral judgement. Do you not think that applies here?
Though I don't know anythinlg about your upbringing I've attended church all of my life. According to my experience there are quite definitely negative aspects to organised religion. There is a tendency to become unhelpfully caught up in celebrity; there is opportunity for misuse of power; and there is often a crude and distasteful obsession with numbers and aggressive evangelism. This stuff exists, clearly, but it does not warrant this bizarrely simplistic, and wholly objectionable, categorisation of a huge number of people.
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I however didn’t comment on the individuals but the organisations as a whole. The individuals are largely unimportant because no matter how pure their intentions the tools they have at their disposal to try and fulfil their intentions undermine their actions. They are using an organisation that was both arrogant enough to believe they are infallible and have intelligence to comprehend and retell the teachings of a higher being and which seemingly used the religion to further their own agendas through the use of condemnation and fear. And now these blatant lies and bigoted beliefs are held as the absolute truth and used to justify despicable actions that seemingly contradict the core elements of that religion and just make the world a worse place for everyone to live in