Reason To Leave Religion

In my experience, those church pews are filled with people who haven't made "an honest conversion." I believe the ratio of hypocrites to actual believers is excessively high.

 

I am very sorry that you had bad interactions with religion. You are not the only one. My ex went to Catholic school. She got kicked out. The nuns abused her so bad, that she balled up her fist, took a swing and knocked one out...stone cold unconscious.

Am very familiar with people who call themselves religious and use it as an excuse to abuse others.

That was not my experience with religion, but I know plenty of others who had those experiences.

 

There are no religious people who believe that molesting children is ok. The priests who do that, were never real priests. They were pedophiles looking for a way to get close to children. They also become sports coaches and ice cream vendors. It has nothing to do with religion at all, other than an opportunity to get close to children.

All sorts of criminals have pretended to be religious, in order to better hide their criminal activity. That has nothing to do with religion, it has to do with how criminals manipulate other people.

There are people who work for charities, just so that they can fund raise and scam people. But that does not mean that all folks who work for charities are corrupt.

There is just a general level of corruption all through our society...all through our institutions. Religion is just one of hundreds of organizations and institutions infiltrated by criminals. They are not some kind of special breeding ground for corruption. That corruption that exists within the church is the same percentage of corruption that exists in all institutions and organizations, across the board.

Your anger is really at criminals and all the evil they do. Religion is not the source of the problem. The source of the problem is criminally minded people.

 

Yes, I agree that evil people have disguised themselves as pious. The problem is, organized religion often denies the evil wrongdoers, shielding them to prevent "bad press" or whatever. So the corrupt organization would throw children to the wolves to protect a pedophile.

 

Well, sure there is some of that. But that is mostly in the Catholic community, I think.

And there is a history to that.

So, first of all, it was not until the 1970s and 1980s that the psychologists figured out that pedophilia was a different kind of illness. Up until that time, it was commonly thought that people could overcome it, like they do with alcohol and drugs.

So, the Catholic community had a centuries long tradition of sanctuary. Trying to reform people, rather than hand them over to the police.

And the reason that existed, is because, in history...prison was just a horror show...and no one there ever got reformed, just tortured.

So the priest community legitimately was trying a better way.

That is how the cover-up started...by legitimately thinking their way of resolving pedophilia was better than prison.

So, it started out with a good intention, without realizing that pedophilia is actually a very very different kind of problem and illness and people very rarely get reformed.

And, other issues as well. The Church has done a range of horrible things. Some basically collaborated with the Nazis. They made a deal that they would not publicly oppose the Nazis if the Nazis left their members alone.

People in bureaucracies often make horrible decisions, based on protecting the organization's image, rather than serving the truth.

So, sure, that kind of thing happens.

But, it is not the only thing going on. There is plenty of good going on as well.

Our major corporations have often done incredibly horrible things.

All institutions, across the board, have had difficulties and problems and corruptions. It is really a general problem and not limited to The Church.

And that includes cover-ups as well. Government corruption being covered up. All kinds of scandals in all kinds of institutions.

Sad, but true...

 

Anyway, if you had the kind of horrible experiences that my ex did? Well, I only have sympathy for you. And I hope you find some better things in your life.

I have had difficulties. And I have experienced abuse and bad people in my life.

And I have confronted abuse and fought against it.

A little of that is good...but if you fight too hard and too long, you just become something else. And you don't want to be that.

To successfully challenge evil and fight it off, you really have to become like a disciplined solider type of person.

I became an advocate for battered women.

And, you know, it is all good and noble work. But when you are fighting off death threats from an abusive husband...you just start to become kind of cold..in order to fight it off...you have to become tough and fearless. And that is fine, a bit. But you tend to also lose your normal sensitivity and nice personality in the mix. You know, I put some bad actors in jail. And one day, I looked around and I realized...you know, I was just like a soldier or something. Nothing wrong with that. But eventually you have to come home from the war...emotionally. And if you spend too long in the trenches, fighting...coming home is not easy.

So, personally, I would just caution you about getting in there, too deep with the fight.

I mean that in the sense of, if you find something nice..oh, who knows...my brother likes birding...and you get involved in that, going out in nature, seeing all the beauty around? Then you are looking to the light and living in joy and positive things.

But the fighting? It can really do something to you, to you personality and not in a good way.

Like I said, from my own experience, some of that is very very good. But it is pretty easy to turn a corner and walk into being the kind of person you don't want to be.

 

Actually, I am in no "fight" and I don't get your point. You have made a lot of assumptions here. The thread topic is "Reason to Leave Religion." I gave my reasons. I am fighting with no one and all I can say to you is... What???

 

A chance to do something.

 

I was very surprised to learn, after watching how Indy 5 movie flopped, that Disney also owned the movie Sound of Freedom but never released it. They sold it in a deal to a different company. Disney is a major corporation, as is the Catholic church, and had its own reason for not releasing this movie about child trafficking.
The most horrifying aspect brought up at one site is that the money that can be made by trafficking is huge! You can sell dope to someone maybe once a day. But you can sell a child multiple times...