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No Thanks by John Doe Religion is an inpulse to explain. A natural impulse that everyone has and everyone grapples with. It's an impulse that sadly, and ironically, has been exploited to convince people to take actions that defy and demean that impulse. The exploiters are (fuck-not these guys again!) the ruling elite of nearly every society, in every era, and ours is no exeption. it's not hard to understand the false sense of security and comfort of faith that religion provides. A lot of us have been through it (sometimes forced) and therefore can understand hard it can be to shake the grip of dogma. Religious dogma, which IS a set of rules, is also a tool used by people in power to keep other people powerless and coerce them them into serving the interests of the powererful. Historys shining examples of religion used to defend and promote most of humanitiy's dumbest moves. Like genocide: the holocaust and the annihilation of the worlds indigenous peoples, like war, from the beginnings of civilization to the Gulf War and beyond. Like prejudice: the continued subjegation of women in all of the most major religions. Like poverty: as a tool of capitalism, religion has taught the poor to accept injustice. Probably the worst affect religion has on us is its ability to create divisions so remarkably deep that people will kill for them. Fuck, scratch any major conflict in the world today and just beneath the skin of diplomacy and territorial demands you will find a fundementalist, bloodthirsty form of one or more organized religion. Many "progressive" people involved in religions believe they can work within their religious institutions to change them for the better. It's an understandable desire-we all work within institutions to some extent, but its kind of dumb in the same way that the Catholic Church's motivation for wanting to feed the hungry is kind of dumb: their writings and dogma tell them to. Shouldn't they be motivated by simply knowing that feeding the hungry is the right thing to do?? People indoctrinated in religions (including the religions of ideology...not mentioning any names), seem to believe that a moral code cannot exist outside of their institution. It can and it does. e have the ability (and the DUTY!) to do the right thing with out the rhetoric of dogmas, the threat of heirarchies or the fear of some old coot in a beard firing a fucking lightning bolt at our sinful, hairy, zitty, little asses. The saddest thing about religion is what is lost. Religion, or more accurately, I suppose, the appropriators and exploiters of religion, have taken our purest impulses of solidarity, compassion, celebration of the wonder and mystery of our lives and turned them against us. This, most of all is why I reject religion: so that I can reclaim these impulses for the causes they deserve...love and justice. Eco boots |
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