Religion Is Unnecessary

Religion is Unnecessary

Overall Introduction:

What is Religion? According to Atheism.com Religion is the set of beliefs, feelings, dogmas and practices that define the relations between human being and sacred or divinity.

Religion supposedly gives a person an identity and relationship. Religion deals with answers to identity-forming questions such as

Selfhood - "Who am I?" "Where did I come from?"

Meaning - "Why am I?" "Where will I go when I die?"

Purpose - "What do I do?" "What is the purpose of life?

No particular religion is ever really ONLY one type of dimension, but is rather a complex whole. The Ritual dimension is what believers DO! Rituals provide believers with a symbolic mode of communication designed to propel them out of ordinary experience and into extraordinary realities; Rituals are often based on the myths contained in a given worldview. Believers feel called upon to do what their great leaders did.

Thus, Christians celebrate the ritual of the Last Supper (the Eucharist) just as Jesus did almost 2,000 years ago. And in participating in this unique, myth-based ritual, a full-on Christian is brought back into authentic Christian experience, which will be the basis of our discussion today, if such Dimension and others is necessary.

My Introduction:

Religion is the biggest killer of all time, with many countries being destroyed. The reason is simple. A religion that allows its faithful to "stray" to another religion loses out, so all religions will fight to prove they are truly correct in their belief, and that God is on their side. The faith is used as a weapon of immense power, as men, women and children will die with a smile, "Knowing" they will be saved by their god. If they are not, they will go to Heaven, and the enemy will go to Hell, eventually. In my opinion, religion is as bad as dictatorship. No-one and nothing should have that much power.

God is Man-Made:

The perception of God has changed over the centuries to accommodate our increasing knowledge. What used to be a good enough explanation 2000 years ago does not measure up anymore. A lot of what was attributed to God is now very easily explained by science.

I personally believe that God is a concept used by humans to explain the yet unexplained. It's not a bad thing at all and it benefits billions of human beings around the world who would otherwise be lost without it. Either that or they would start demanding their share of the pie while on earth and that would create some crowd control problems. Mexico is a good example of a country where the poor is pacified by religion. Without it, the country would descend into chaos as they would not accept their current level of poverty.

I often watch Christian television and I find interesting how modern preaching is more or less a religious version of political spin. They have an answer for everything but unfortunately, there are often clashes and incompatibilities between the answers. God is powerful but yet, he cannot control the negative events in your life. He is always happy yet it makes him unhappy when you sin. You can sin and yet still go to heaven if you believe in God but you cannot go to heaven if you do not sin and don't believe in God.

I'd like to see a God who is going to give you heaven before you have to prove yourself.