Religion teaches children that they should be independent from their biological parents, but totally dependent upon their "spiritual" parents, Mary and God/Jesus. (That Jesus is both Mary's son and God, makes the Bible a bit like Oedipus, of course.)
It is also a religion that teaches people to love freedom and hate authoritarianism on the one hand, even as it requires them to be submissive to the will of an authoritarian God (and his Catholic Church, at least spiritually speaking anyway) in order to achieve "true freedom."
That a person can only be "free" by hypnotizing them self into believing they must always "obey" an authoritarian God, only demonstrates the miracle of how the human mind can make sense of pretty much anything it wants to believe, no matter how paradoxical or self contradictory it may be.
Such a claim is not merely an indictment of religion, of course, but of the human mind itself. For it is how all institutions, be they private or political, religious or financial, "sells' people their own slavery, by convincing them that by doing so, they are purchasing their own "freedom" in the process.
And that is why Religion is so interesting, for it trains people to "trust" implicitly in people who would rape their own children and rob them blind for their own enrichment, all in exchange for the comforting thought that the agony of death, although a horrible experience in its own right, is not the end of life (although, if you end up in Hell, you will surely wish it was).
And this kind of implicit trust then leads us to trust kings and queens, politicians and economists, bankers and financial analysts, military leaders and wealthy businessmen, and even priests and atheists, as long as they all say what we so long to hear.
It is also a religion that teaches people to love freedom and hate authoritarianism on the one hand, even as it requires them to be submissive to the will of an authoritarian God (and his Catholic Church, at least spiritually speaking anyway) in order to achieve "true freedom."
That a person can only be "free" by hypnotizing them self into believing they must always "obey" an authoritarian God, only demonstrates the miracle of how the human mind can make sense of pretty much anything it wants to believe, no matter how paradoxical or self contradictory it may be.
Such a claim is not merely an indictment of religion, of course, but of the human mind itself. For it is how all institutions, be they private or political, religious or financial, "sells' people their own slavery, by convincing them that by doing so, they are purchasing their own "freedom" in the process.
And that is why Religion is so interesting, for it trains people to "trust" implicitly in people who would rape their own children and rob them blind for their own enrichment, all in exchange for the comforting thought that the agony of death, although a horrible experience in its own right, is not the end of life (although, if you end up in Hell, you will surely wish it was).
And this kind of implicit trust then leads us to trust kings and queens, politicians and economists, bankers and financial analysts, military leaders and wealthy businessmen, and even priests and atheists, as long as they all say what we so long to hear.
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