RELIGION - THE VIRTUAL DRUG

All throughout history, humankind has been forced to bear the legacy of a religious perspective; each religion professing its particular brand of morality and consciousness as being more correct than the others. Yet, despite their pious claims, all religions are conspicuously marked with a history of intellectual oppression, promotion of nonsensical prejudice, fear-based recruitment techniques, and absurd mythological entities to explain everything from our origin to beyond the grave; just to name a few.

Cocaine, heroin, nicotine...and religion??
It doesn't seem like a likely grouping but if you were to categorize and define something as a 'bad' drug, one might choose, 'an artificial and non-beneficial means of stimulating the brain's pleasure center'. So how exactly does religion fit this definition?

Let's create a similar scenario that will highlight this point.

Imagine if there was a special group of people that believed a magical rabbit (who shall be named 'Nefarious') created and ruled the universe, and these people regularly worshipped this mystical rabbit to thank it for their existence; let's call these people, "Earians". Now Earians devote Wednesday evenings to gathering in beautiful and decorative holes in the ground where they perform elaborate rituals such as drinking carrot juice, gently biting other Earians as a show of respect to each other, and wearing huge fake ears. Earians believe that this pleases the magical rabbit entity and, in exchange, the rabbit entity is supposed to provide protection from unknown dangers, and guarantees each Earian an eternal place in the rabbit's hole upon their death.

Utter and complete nonsense.

And yet, the only difference between this nonsensical Earian faith, and 'any' other faith-based religion on Earth, is the nature of the ethereal entity being worshipped and the structure of the rituals that comprise it. This leads to the ultimatum that the only thing which can make or break the validity of any given faith is the sheer existence of the ethereal entity in the first place. If you take away the ethereal entity, a significant portion of the religious apparatus collapses into meaninglessness, effectively revealing that billions of people have equivalently been wasting a very large portion of their lives in the pursuit of gaining favor with a nonexistent magical bunny.

Religion is a drug.
Nothing is more terrifying than the prospect of death. Death is the root of all fears; it defines fear. This is the instinctual hook that religions latch on to in order to recruit the innocent/naïve among us, to maintain control of its members, and to capitalize on and focus the power of many into the hands of the few. This fear of death is greatly alleviated by promises of ethereal protection and a promise of an afterlife. As nonsensical as it sounds, people want to believe in immortality so badly that they are quite willing to submit to illogical and magical explanations for everything in their universe, and to even accept that questions they might have that may challenge these perspectives are not tolerated by the religions. The followers simply submit. This sets the stage for the perfect 'high'.

Submission to 'faith' in the ethereal is a high, no different than the high that could be achieved from illicit chemicals. What could be a better high than believing you're immortal and will never truly die?

Why is religion a bad drug?
You already know the answer...would you join the Earians in their pursuit of gaining favor with the magical rabbit? Of course not, and if you were to cross path's with one of their followers and heard their pitch about why you need to join their faith, you would think they were crazy!
Exactly; they are insane. When one believes wholeheartedly in fantasy, they are insane. It's an easy extrapolation to understand that anybody who believes in the ethereal is insane. Yes, that would mean billions of people all over our planet are to some degree, insane due to religion. This is why religion is a bad drug, it puts nonsense in your head that you act upon, make important decisions upon, and at its worst, hurt yourself or others because of these perspectives.

How do religions trap us?
Though we are very complicated creatures and have many very different wants and needs among us, we are all most fundamentally human, and all humans share the same basic instinctual needs. It is upon these needs that religions plant their seeds, claiming ownership over what is inherently ours, and reinventing these desires to be interpreted as something that can only be fulfilled through religiously-ordained channels.

Some examples of how religions take control of the human mind:

Death - Immortality, reincarnation, and/or some form of ethereal protection from harm are the bread and butter of virtually all religions. Appeasing the fearsome nature of death is a very powerful tool by which religions can attract and manipulate their followers

Fear- Nothing will coerce people faster than mortal fear. The threat of an unimaginable eternal damnation (e.g., hell) is the most powerful tool in any religion's toolchest

Ego - It is arguable that the most beautiful buildings in the world are churches, and with all the pomp, theatrics, beauty, and ceremony, coupled with the promises of 'heaven', well, who wouldn't want to be affiliated with that?

Curiosity - Most religions teach 'denial' skills (e.g., denying the existence of dinosaurs, etc.) in order to oppress any opportunity for followers to begin questioning the validity of religious teachings

Communion - Other than for the purposes of recruitment, religious followers often isolate themselves from non-followers of their faith, only allowing themselves to express this love and tolerance for their fellow humans amongst their own kind

Guilt and Shame - By creating a plethora of illogical, yet religion-benefiting guilt-laden morality (e.g. masturbating, homosexuality) in the minds of followers, they will much more easily and unquestioningly submit to the agenda of the religion in order to find relief from the artificially-induced shame

Anger - Most religious people typically react with great rage when their faith is put into question. They will often respond with shame-manipulation, diminutives, and other oppressive tactics, all with the intent of pushing away what they perceive as a threat to their beliefs

Remorse - Religions have created an easy 'escape-route' for people to believe they are forgiven for indiscretions they may have committed; a very appealing notion, especially for those that are prone to ill-intent

Nobility - Religions attach the notions of nobility to things that are not in any way noble. There are countless cases of religious people 'bending the rules' and justify it in the light of a 'means to an end', knowing that forgiveness is but a prayer away. This can manifest in many forms such as slander (e.g., atheism is Satanism), all the way to truly heinous crimes (e.g., terrorism), and yet these acts can still fit within a loose interpretation of religious doctrine as being something 'noble'

Pseudo-Logic - We all need answers, and religions typically claim to have all of them. This, fortified by religions teaching fantasy as fact, and various pseudo-logic techniques (e.g. credibility smearing by interweaving fact with fantasy, or bifurcation of complex scenarios, etc) in place of true logic, leaves a religious person poorly equipped to constitute reality for themselves

Repetition/Confusion - By overwhelming followers with a ceaseless barrage of religious mantra and routine, it will be impossible to make sense of it all, and hence becomes inconceivable to those followers that it could all be fantasy

Love - Something we can never get enough of. Religions leverage this desirable and teach you that the love you receive from their god is of the purest kind, and never stops flowing

How did we go so wrong?

Assumptions. We humans just love to run with assumptions. This, combined with our inability to surpass our ego once we have invested in an assumption (cognitive dissonance), drives us further and further down incorrect paths of perception.

The function of religion has run its course.
It's hard to imagine humankind evolving in perspective in any way other than the fantasy of religion. It would be difficult for our great ancestors to understand the world as a product of flowing energy as defined by the science of physics. They simply didn't have the knowledge to truly see our world and as such we have been forced to bear the blasphemy of mythological perspective for eons, suffering the tyranny of those that maneuvered themselves into the focal points of this power (such as priests, kings, etc.).

Religion is a natural evolutionary stage in our burgeoning intelligence but we have come far enough now to shed the shackles of mythology and to stand free from ethereal addiction. We have the strength to face life, and death, and enough science exists to detail and explain a huge number of important questions, including the big ones: Who are we? Where did we come from? What is the point of life?

So what 'are' we to believe in?
Yourself. Simply put, the noblest purpose in life is to make yourself happy. This purpose must always be balanced against the necessity of not hurting anybody else, but in any way that you feel the need to exercise your instinctual pulls, you are granted the right to pursue those needs. This is the true path to happiness, through the intelligent interpretation and placation of your unique balance of instinctual desires.

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Thanks to: http://www.betterhuman.org/ for this article.
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