A psychological approch to how religion works

[Emporion]

...do not reject the entirety of a complex ideology because certain parts are rejected.

Why reject certain parts when one can refute Christianity with one word?

[Zenith]

Repentance is basically the way of securing the delusion. Oddly enough it’s about the same in parallel, to the final initiations used in cults. The really terrible thing about original sin is how it effects the real self and the ideal self. It’s a belief system that says this:

My ideal self is to be as good in god’s eyes as possible: perfection
My real self is a terrible incurable sinner. Like the amazing graze goes: a wretch.
I also believe that I can never in my life time achieve my ideal self: frustration

If I can make you think with your emotions, and not your mind, I can control you. What a better way to make a person think with their emotions than to convince them that about this idea of original sin; to make the real self and ideal self as far apart as possible, to the point that they opposite each other. The real and ideal self being far apart is a psychological explanation for what causes frustration, hence depression and anger. To get people to think with their emotions, you fuel the emotions. Friedrich Nietzsche first proposed that religion exploits human emotions. I’m explaining how it does it. Although this of course differs depending on if an individual believe it, and how deeply they believe it. In this sense Religion functions like a sociopathic-ideology.

About "the original sin", because your subject is "A psychological approch to how religion works", do you realize that this original sin is only in christianity? Unless I am wrong, not even in Judaism is this theory. Your theory fits best the protestant beliefs, because Orthodoxy and Catholicism seems to proclaim that doing more good deeds than doing bad deeds, with the condition of being part of their institution, means that you go to heaven. Though many protestant denominations are also like that. Anyway, there are also protestant denominations (or local beliefs, I don't know for sure which of them) that say that "just believe in Jesus Christ and then you can do whatever you want" (but perhaps with the only obligation to go to church every sunday). So "the original sin" is mostly avoided in Christianity and does not appear in other religions. So this is not a psychological approach to how religion works.

Anyway, I know there are people that have this frustration you talk about, because I have met.
Though:
1. this theory is not shared by most.
2. With a better understanding of the bible, that frustration cannot happen.
3. Perhaps only religious leaders can force such a theory in people's minds, perhaps because the religious leaders are blindly believed.

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...do not reject the entirety of a complex ideology because certain parts are rejected.

Why reject certain parts when one can refute Christianity with one word?

that word being...?