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Originally posted by PsygnisFive (because he always seeks to outperform me )
Religion is a crutch. People use religion to make them feel better, people use religion to give them hope, to tell them it'll all be ok in th end. "Gods watching", "Gods will", "Divine intervention" -- it all plays to a reaffirmation of some higher power controlling whats going on in the universe to make it not happenstance, not out of ones control. The fear of not being safe from harm, of having an unknown and dangerous future, is the biggest thing people use religion for. The fear of insignificance, the fear of unimportance, the fear of inferiority, the fear of vulnerability. These are the reasons the Christian churchs, and more specifically the Catholic Church, has, in the past, put down scientific efforts, and why modern Protestant churches vehemently deny a 13 billion year old universe and evolutionary origins of mankind.
We have lost our special place in Gods glorious plan. We were no longer at the center of his universe, the thing hes most focused on. We're no longer special among the animals, destined to be above them, beter then them. We are told "you're not special, you're not unique, you're just another insignificant, weak, and fragile animal on a small back-water blue planet. you've only existed a brief flash of time compared to the aeons those before you existed. you are nothing compared to the awe inspiring age and vastness of our universe."
Religious memes exist solely to glorify and placate humanity at the same time. Make us feel good about ourselves, tell use were better then the rest, stroke our egos and drug our minds with self-gratifying ideas. Then tell use theres someone watching, someone taking care of everything. A little prayer and you won't get struck by lightening. A small sacrificial offering in a shrine and your house won't get flooded. A cross over your chest and a weekly visit to a meeting hall so when you die you won't cease to exist, but you'll live in in happiness forever. Noone glorifies pain and suffering in the afterlife, noone glorifies oblivion. Noone glorifies anything negative because religion serves one purpose: To make us feel safe, secure, and good about ourselves.
Fight the unknown, fight the mysterious, fight the new. Snuff out that candle in the dark so you don't have to see the frightful monsters and demons that await you in your journeys, close your eyes and cover your ears, get in a corner and hope to God it'll pass. Burn the books, burn the heretics, burn the Jews the Blacks the Atheists and the Witches. Burn it all. Cower in the corner.
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This person seems to think all of religion occured in ye olde catholic church or ye salem witch burnings. All this is is a bunch of one-sided innaccurate generalizations.
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Religion = crutch because religion represents man's laziness and refusal to think for himself, man's inability to self-govern himself, man's inability to take charge over his destiny. God is a projection of the superego.
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Religion, or anything else for that matter, is only a crutch when people use it in that manner. There are people who worship rush limbaugh or micheal moore like a god, is politics a crutch too? For some people it probably is. However, religion, like politics, isn't a crutch by nature. The people who use it as a crutch use it as a crutch because they need a crutch. If crutch needing people didn't have religion to use they'd just find something else. People use athiesm or "straight edge" status as a crutch too. I'm know plenty of straight edgers use their sobriety to put themselves on a pedestal over their peers. Seemingly for no other reason than just wanting to feel superior. They use sobriety as a crutch to lift up their low self esteem and percieved lack of control(or some other pop-psych nonsense) Does that mean it is appropriate to, in a general sense, write off all straight edgers as using their sobriety as a crutch to help them feel morally superior to their peers? Would you ever post
"Straight edge is a crutch"?
I hope not.
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Now granted it's probably an overgeneralization to claim that everyone uses it as a crutch but most people need religion. When I came to the realization that there was no God, I felt like a safety blanket had been ripped from me. It took a little bit for me to get over that insecurity.
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I wouldn't say that most people need religion any more than anybody needs any philosophy that they have held as truth for a long time. It is just that so many people have no problem being religious and see no reason to change themselves in that respect. It is always difficult to alter any longstanding deeply held beliefs. It would be equally difficult for a dyed in the wool communist to make the conversion to capitalism.