Religion, as we mostly agree, is a man-made concoction. It is often founded partially on history, and mostly on fabrication. The likelihood of this explanation being the most accurate is backed up by observing a rumor being spread; starts as fact, changes a little bit from each person telling it until it's a story about a different person, a different situation, and a different outcome so that it's no longer recognizable. Happens all the time, and time is a multiplying force in it, too; the longer it goes on, the more warped it gets.
What once were parables became accepted as fact by many and became truth even though it was neither truth nor fact, but it's largely assumed that because, hey, the more people think it's true, the more it's accepted as it. History, after all, is written by the victors and ergo history is filled with liars. The further back into it we go, the more of a lie it is likely to become. We have independent sources nowadays and archeological evidence for what we accept as fact but we still have to accept that sometimes even what was recorded may not entirely be true, which is why I always discard the argument for the supposed authenticity of the bible and the quran and the talmud, especially when there's far more of a void in regards to the supposed events than there are statements supporting authenticity, which is always a red flag. Removing the supernatural miracles that defy the possibility of reality and the utter lack of recent evidence, when taken into context the stories involving these texts become more and more ludicrous and difficult to take seriously. The quran, for example, was written from, supposedly, 3,000,000 different sources and one guy took all 3,000,000 accounts and narrowed them down to 1,500 or so and then further down to like 1,000. On his own. Funneling 3,000,000 accounts through a single guy and yet virtually none of these accounts can actually be found anywhere else other than the claims made by the believers of the book these supposed accounts went into? And what gave this one guy the authority to, a century after the fact, parse and piece it all together, exactly? If these were all claims, and he was having to go on context, how did he really know what did and did not contradict? If nothing else, I suppose it justifies why the quran keeps shifting its tones and stories and commands so much, but that isn't a justification you really want because then it just throws more fuel onto the fiery debate of authenticity.
The bible isn't much better, having been cobbled together 300 years after the fact by a bunch of people who never experienced anything and basically picked-and-chose what they liked and didn't like and canonized/discarded stuff at their whim.
So I get to the meat of what I'm getting at here with this; this points to people taking the stories and rumors and cobbling them together for the sake of creating something to use as a means of control. Religion, if you are not aware [I know you all are] is a powerful tool of both unification and division along lines that the people cobbling the rumors and stories together desire; unify these people that you like, and alienate these other people you are bigoted against, and rally your unified forces against them to crush the opposition and your bigot-hated enemy. Nevermind the reason for the bigotry; it's not important, it simply exists, we are all too aware of that.
So, religion has always been a force of unification. This used to be a "good" thing, though how good you can really consider it is really up for debate. Nations of today and the invisible divisions we throw up amongst ourselves were created largely by something as silly as stories and rumors which became so permanent that they eventually created these dividing lines. You see, rulers of the old days were not very strong; there is a reason the whole "divine right" thing became so popular; because it was the cheapest and easiest way for men with no real grip on their reign otherwise to actually HAVE a grip on their reign. It wasn't foolproof, of course, but if the mob believed you were appointed by beings far more powerful and terrible than they could imagine, wielding powers the equivalent of modern nuclear weaponry, then they weren't going to be quite so vocal and hasty to demand you get the hell off the throne when you continually took a massive dump on them all day every day; you weren't just bitching at your pharaoh or king or dynasty or emperor, you were bitching at a man who had a being with his finger perpetually hovering over the Big Red Button.
Unification always comes in one of two ways; through ideas, or through force. Force is the easier method of unifying people, and ironically, it's the weakest. It takes the most simple-minded of ideas, it requires only that you have your minions kill your enemy's minions, and you generally don't have to do anything beyond having a bigger army than someone else other than claim that it's your right by the gods/god to keep your own guys in check. Ideas, however, were harder, took longer, had a far less chance of success, albeit with a higher payoff...not to mention the invincibility of an idea if enough people believe in it. You can destroy a nation but if it was founded on an idea, a principle, then nevermind the invisible borders; the spirit of that nation and its people still live on. Take as such the Greeks and Romans with their ideas of republic and democracy...novel concepts in their time, now the backbone of the modern developed and developing world, even though the nations that built it are, in their original images, long gone.
Religion was simply used to unify. To scare the poor and pitiful into submission. It's still used to this day to do just that but it's no longer a necessary force of any kind. Lots of Christians in the US are well-known for saying that the US is a Christian nation and that all of its problems can be blamed on supposed moral backsliding caused by a "lack of faith" but when you really look at all the problems, lack of faith isn't the cause, it's the cure, and the actual cause is, in fact, those of higher faith becoming more rabid in their desire to FORCE [key word] their ideas onto everyone else in some weird desire to homogenize everyone to be just like them. They are an example of the worst aspect of humanity; the resistance to change and progress in the name of being content and comfortable. Everyone wants it easy. Difficult ideas and difficult tasks take work; almost nobody wants to work. They don't want the idea. They want to apply force; crush the difficult task down and make it simple and easy so you don't have to think about it.
In this day and age of instantaneous communication of ideas and thoughts, this is an outdated concept, and unfortunately human nature doesn't like that... But still, we can fight against our own nature, we do it all the time, quite often for the better. I say almost nobody wants to work; but notice the few who do are always the ones who are more intelligent, who do more than those who just want to make everything boring and simple and basic.
This is why religion is no longer necessary. If, indeed, it even ever really was to begin with. We no longer need a unifying force based on scare tactics and force. We can use, and are using, a unifying force based on ideas. Ironically the homogenization that comes with it is a good one, as opposed to the homogenization that comes from religion and force. The homogenization from trade of thoughts and ideas breeds cooperation, discourages bias and bigotry and prejudice, and brings humanity closer to understanding that no matter who you are, who you prefer to have sex with, or what gender you are/want to be, you are still a human, and that we can improve our own lives by improving the lives of others based on this crucial and obvious fact. Whereas the homogenization brought on by religion and force BREEDS bias and bigotry and prejudice, and tears humanity asunder by forcing the notion on people that if you have a different skin tone or stature, have sex with someone you're not supposed to or you are a certain gender/want to be a certain gender that you're less than human, bringing on destruction and holding back both the individual and the collective of humanity in so doing.
And that is why, in this day and age, where WE do actually have such immense power as we once feared mythical creatures for having, religion is not only no longer necessary...it needs to go away, because it is a relic of a time where force was an acceptable means of unification. Now is the time of ideas, flowing faster and further than ever before in human history...and religion, and those who desire to rule through the weakest means, need to step aside, and fade into the night, never to be seen again.
What once were parables became accepted as fact by many and became truth even though it was neither truth nor fact, but it's largely assumed that because, hey, the more people think it's true, the more it's accepted as it. History, after all, is written by the victors and ergo history is filled with liars. The further back into it we go, the more of a lie it is likely to become. We have independent sources nowadays and archeological evidence for what we accept as fact but we still have to accept that sometimes even what was recorded may not entirely be true, which is why I always discard the argument for the supposed authenticity of the bible and the quran and the talmud, especially when there's far more of a void in regards to the supposed events than there are statements supporting authenticity, which is always a red flag. Removing the supernatural miracles that defy the possibility of reality and the utter lack of recent evidence, when taken into context the stories involving these texts become more and more ludicrous and difficult to take seriously. The quran, for example, was written from, supposedly, 3,000,000 different sources and one guy took all 3,000,000 accounts and narrowed them down to 1,500 or so and then further down to like 1,000. On his own. Funneling 3,000,000 accounts through a single guy and yet virtually none of these accounts can actually be found anywhere else other than the claims made by the believers of the book these supposed accounts went into? And what gave this one guy the authority to, a century after the fact, parse and piece it all together, exactly? If these were all claims, and he was having to go on context, how did he really know what did and did not contradict? If nothing else, I suppose it justifies why the quran keeps shifting its tones and stories and commands so much, but that isn't a justification you really want because then it just throws more fuel onto the fiery debate of authenticity.
The bible isn't much better, having been cobbled together 300 years after the fact by a bunch of people who never experienced anything and basically picked-and-chose what they liked and didn't like and canonized/discarded stuff at their whim.
So I get to the meat of what I'm getting at here with this; this points to people taking the stories and rumors and cobbling them together for the sake of creating something to use as a means of control. Religion, if you are not aware [I know you all are] is a powerful tool of both unification and division along lines that the people cobbling the rumors and stories together desire; unify these people that you like, and alienate these other people you are bigoted against, and rally your unified forces against them to crush the opposition and your bigot-hated enemy. Nevermind the reason for the bigotry; it's not important, it simply exists, we are all too aware of that.
So, religion has always been a force of unification. This used to be a "good" thing, though how good you can really consider it is really up for debate. Nations of today and the invisible divisions we throw up amongst ourselves were created largely by something as silly as stories and rumors which became so permanent that they eventually created these dividing lines. You see, rulers of the old days were not very strong; there is a reason the whole "divine right" thing became so popular; because it was the cheapest and easiest way for men with no real grip on their reign otherwise to actually HAVE a grip on their reign. It wasn't foolproof, of course, but if the mob believed you were appointed by beings far more powerful and terrible than they could imagine, wielding powers the equivalent of modern nuclear weaponry, then they weren't going to be quite so vocal and hasty to demand you get the hell off the throne when you continually took a massive dump on them all day every day; you weren't just bitching at your pharaoh or king or dynasty or emperor, you were bitching at a man who had a being with his finger perpetually hovering over the Big Red Button.
Unification always comes in one of two ways; through ideas, or through force. Force is the easier method of unifying people, and ironically, it's the weakest. It takes the most simple-minded of ideas, it requires only that you have your minions kill your enemy's minions, and you generally don't have to do anything beyond having a bigger army than someone else other than claim that it's your right by the gods/god to keep your own guys in check. Ideas, however, were harder, took longer, had a far less chance of success, albeit with a higher payoff...not to mention the invincibility of an idea if enough people believe in it. You can destroy a nation but if it was founded on an idea, a principle, then nevermind the invisible borders; the spirit of that nation and its people still live on. Take as such the Greeks and Romans with their ideas of republic and democracy...novel concepts in their time, now the backbone of the modern developed and developing world, even though the nations that built it are, in their original images, long gone.
Religion was simply used to unify. To scare the poor and pitiful into submission. It's still used to this day to do just that but it's no longer a necessary force of any kind. Lots of Christians in the US are well-known for saying that the US is a Christian nation and that all of its problems can be blamed on supposed moral backsliding caused by a "lack of faith" but when you really look at all the problems, lack of faith isn't the cause, it's the cure, and the actual cause is, in fact, those of higher faith becoming more rabid in their desire to FORCE [key word] their ideas onto everyone else in some weird desire to homogenize everyone to be just like them. They are an example of the worst aspect of humanity; the resistance to change and progress in the name of being content and comfortable. Everyone wants it easy. Difficult ideas and difficult tasks take work; almost nobody wants to work. They don't want the idea. They want to apply force; crush the difficult task down and make it simple and easy so you don't have to think about it.
In this day and age of instantaneous communication of ideas and thoughts, this is an outdated concept, and unfortunately human nature doesn't like that... But still, we can fight against our own nature, we do it all the time, quite often for the better. I say almost nobody wants to work; but notice the few who do are always the ones who are more intelligent, who do more than those who just want to make everything boring and simple and basic.
This is why religion is no longer necessary. If, indeed, it even ever really was to begin with. We no longer need a unifying force based on scare tactics and force. We can use, and are using, a unifying force based on ideas. Ironically the homogenization that comes with it is a good one, as opposed to the homogenization that comes from religion and force. The homogenization from trade of thoughts and ideas breeds cooperation, discourages bias and bigotry and prejudice, and brings humanity closer to understanding that no matter who you are, who you prefer to have sex with, or what gender you are/want to be, you are still a human, and that we can improve our own lives by improving the lives of others based on this crucial and obvious fact. Whereas the homogenization brought on by religion and force BREEDS bias and bigotry and prejudice, and tears humanity asunder by forcing the notion on people that if you have a different skin tone or stature, have sex with someone you're not supposed to or you are a certain gender/want to be a certain gender that you're less than human, bringing on destruction and holding back both the individual and the collective of humanity in so doing.
And that is why, in this day and age, where WE do actually have such immense power as we once feared mythical creatures for having, religion is not only no longer necessary...it needs to go away, because it is a relic of a time where force was an acceptable means of unification. Now is the time of ideas, flowing faster and further than ever before in human history...and religion, and those who desire to rule through the weakest means, need to step aside, and fade into the night, never to be seen again.
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