Religion: Starting Over

If I could change human nature, one of the things I would do is to hit the reset button on religion. Religion is the powerhouse behind some of the worst things in the world. It is at least part of the inspiration for the Israeli strikes this summer against Palestinians (and so far Palestinians have been almost the only casualties in the conflict), as well as the inspiration behind Palestinian rockets fired into Israel as well as the way the Palestinian militias have put civilians directly in the line of fire. The only thing that Palestinian militias and the Israelis agree on is that Palestinian civilians should get killed in the name of religion. And here in America, there are a lot of people who at least act as if the gospel is where Jesus said you should accumulate assault weapons and be ready to use them. And as the previous blog essay indicated, a lot of religion is just a scam. I wish I could hit the reset button.

And starting over might allow the good aspects of religion to grow back. If there is a God of love, then this power might be able to find greater expression. There are many loving Christians (and Jews, and Muslims, and Buddhists, etc.) but the people who use religion as a justification for hatred crowd them out like tender seedlings among gigantic weeds.

I suspect that religion is inherently illogical and cannot have a reasonable basis. But suppose I am wrong. If there is a true God of love, then our minds ought to be able to reasonably choose that God and that religion. One of the main reasons this cannot happen now is the religious part of most people’s minds is filled with religious junk that we have inherited from previous millennia. If we could just hit the reset button and make a reasonable choice about what form our religious instinct should take…maybe Christianity would more closely resemble what Jesus said than what violent conservative Christians believe we should say using His Name as a justification.

Dream over. Time to get back to real life.