Merely a System of Control

This article was published on January 31st, 2005.


It’s killed more innocents than any disease, than any tragedy, than any war. It
has taught intolerance and hate, greed and selfishness. It has promoted elitism
and social isolation. And yet, nearly eighty percent of Americans swear by it’s
teachings, flock to its gatherings, and promote it’s dominance and continued
abuse of society.

The institution of religion has been around more or less as long as man,
possibly longer,depending on who you ask. And ever since it’s innocent beginnings, it has grown
into an overbearing and powerful weight on the shoulders of society, used by the
powerful to control the masses.

Now, before I go much further, I’d like to quickly make an important
distinction. Religion and faith/spirituality are very different things. One can
be spiritual without being religious and, unfortunately, one can most definitely
be religious without being spiritual.

Religion is nothing more than a social structure created by men as a means to
convey (initially) “God’s word” that has subsequently morphed, through careful
guidance by the power hungry, into a very useful machine for controlling the
populace.

It’s hard to argue religion’s credibility in reference to “truth,”
“righteousness,” and “salvation” without looking at all the skeletons in its
closet, and let me tell you, there’re a lot of them. Just for starters, let’s
take a look at basic ideology. The world’s largest religions, Christianity,
Islam,
Buddhism, and Hinduism, all preach peace and non-aggression. The Christians have
their commandments, the Muslims have their prophecies of brotherhood, etc, etc.

And yet, seemingly among the leading reason for murder throughout
history is religion. Apparently, “Thou Shalt Not Kill” only
applies to people that pray to the same invisible man that you do. It’s
impossible to ignore, from the Crusades and Inquisitions of years long past, to
the middle-eastern Jihad, and Catholic/Protestant struggle in Ireland today,
religion seems to have its hands continuously soaking in the blood of
innocents, regardless of the time period.

Don’t gloss over the key word in that sentence; innocents. Don’t get me wrong,
any time one
religious nutcase blows up, murders, kills, or in any other way, removes from
existence, another religious nutcase, I’m a happy camper. But it’s when these
stupid, meaningless disputes over interpretations of the word of a being no one
has ever seen, heard, or documented empirically before, start to kill innocent
people, going about their everyday life, it really rubs me the wrong way. The
punishment for murder in the name of religion should go along with what
they preach, an ‘eye for an eye’. You kill someone in the name of God? Well,
that’s wonderful, now you get to die too. Makes the world a much better place a
lot
quicker.

Now on to our next hurdle in religion’s “peaceful” partnership with society, the
question of tolerance. Tolerance of and love for all fellow man, be they
religious,
non-religious, black, white, healthy or handicapped. Apparently, this is a
founding ideal of the world’s most prominent religion, Christianity. Yet
Christians also seem to be the most intolerant and bigoted of them all,
especially here at home. Who other than the most caring and compassionate of
Christian’s will turn away homosexuals from equality and fair treatment? Who but
the kind-hearted and understanding Christian would declare that all those who
think otherwise are not only "wrong", but damned to eternal suffering for being
being so.

Don’t think I’m singling out Christians here. All religions suffer the same
hypocritical actions, from Judaism, to Sihkism. I merely focus on the Christian
faith because it is the most prominent in the United States (76.5% of all
Americans are Christian as of 2000), it also, in my opinion, happens to be the
most hypocritical, and thereby, the most ripe for example.

Speaking of hypocrisy, let's talk about the support of religious causes.
Internationally, our best friends, the Israelis are fighting to maintain their
homeland. Ironically, in recent polls, many Israelis (the majority of whom are
Jews) believe that the Palestinians should in fact have a land of their own,
however, they fully support the continued suppression of the Palestinian people
in the form of government sanctioned Zionism (the religious movement to
establish a Jewish homeland around Jerusalem). Let’s hear it for double
standards!

Here at home, a much more prominent example of this unabated hypocrisy is in the
now well-beaten argument of abortion. Christians are, as a rule, pro-life. Makes
sense, “Thou Shalt Not Kill,”… wait a minute. Anyway, back to the point at hand.
Abortion is bad, all children should be born. Well, that’s all said and good and
noble, but how many Christian Ministers do you see
adopting orphaned crack-babies, or how many anti-abortion activists do you see
taking in homeless African-American children from the
inner-city?

So despite these wonderful ethics and life lessons that religion seems to teach
us, people still put on their Sunday linen, they still wake up at 5:30 every
morning, turn to the east and pray. Pardon the pun, but for God’s sake, why?
Because people need a reason, a justification for their own existence, and what
better reason than religious teachings?

Man’s mind, as a stereotyped norm, is too simplistic and opposed to the theory
of grasping the fact that after death, there is, (to put it bluntly)
nothing. People don’t like that. So, they create traditions, customs,
procedures, and rituals to worship an invisible being that will provide meaning
to
their lives. An invisible being that states that everything they do is
worthwhile, because there is more to come, but it’s a secret, so you can’t know
what it truly is till you get there. Good, logical storytelling.

Of course, such unwavering devotion from the mass populace quickly attracted a
crowd of power hungry individuals who morphed religion to serve their own
personal needs. Our favorite, most loveable Christians, the Catholics,
determined that
God, in his infallible perfection, still need your monetary donations, and that
if you gave enough, they’d even reserve you some box seats in Heaven. And you
know what? People bought it. They gobbled it right up and the Catholic church
became the richest religous organization in the world. "Well, the men in power
told us, and they know better, so they must be right." How can institutionalized
religion be anything other than a mutated system of government, except instead
of a democracy, it’s a totalitarian oligarchy, run by the religious elite, who
define their own boundaries, for their own benefit. Afghanistan's ruling
fundamentally Islamic Taliban was another prime example of interpreatition
turned power grab. Through their extreme interpretation of the Koran the Taliban
was able to maintain wealth and dominance over an entire country, who was too
scared to question the words of their religious elite.


You know, this could honestly go on forever. Religion has damaged the world in
such a way that it may be long since irreparable, and that’s too bad. Religion,
despite its few shining moments, systematically works to better itself through
programmed and pre-mediated control of the public and it’s resources, no matter
the cost. It works to create a self-centered, biased, and close-minded public
that works for itself and no one else. As long as those in charge are
benefiting, who cares
what happens to the little people? They believe, that’s all that matters, right?

Religion is nothing more than a system of control hiding behind the biggest
fairy-tale ever told. The second thatman stepped in between God and the
individual
and said, “No no wait, you’re reading this wrong, what He really meant was…”
you’ve lost your faith and your spirituality. You’ve become a drone of the
religious juggernaut and I am sorry for your loss.