Why don't people just make up their own religion?

[Epimethean]

Given all the square wheels already in existence, why would any sane pers-oops, there's the crux of it ...

[Faith No More]

A big reason people don't create their own religion is because a large chunk of theists automatically believe what their parents believed in. Religion is passed down from generation to generation like bad genetics and the cycle isn't broken until someone dares question the garbage they are fed. Considering religions like Christianity have the fear element, most people are afraid to even think outside the box out of the lingering belief that god might roast their soul on an open fire if they do.

[Anymouse]

Please do vote, and make it Obama. As the only superpower on the planet, the last thing we need ( as a civilisation) is the likes of Palin and Huckabee and their creationism beliefs, or mitt Romney and his crazy cult attempting to send us into another dark age.

Yours sincerely

A European.

Don't forget people like Michelle Bachmann, who had to spend a sizable portion of her campaign denying she had dabbled in witchcraft as a teen. Unfortunately here, though no one would ever admit it, people vote ofttimes solely based on their religious views, but justify it with canned sound-bite rhetoric from Fox News (that organization is owned by a foreigner, why do the wingnuts let a foreigner tell them what to think). There is an organization here trying to get a moratorium on building mosques. It has the support of a couple Congressmen (though not the Muslim Congressman who was just sworn in to office using the Koran owned by Thomas Jefferson).

You could have the best social, political, or economic plan ever devised in the history of politics, but if you announced you were an atheist, you would be ignored by the press and at the polls; if you said you were a Wiccan, your fight would be even harder than Bachmann's and she is a Tea-Party Republican.

CS Lewis wrote in his novella It Can't Happen Here, "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the Flag and carrying the Cross." You only need to turn on the news to see that is happening now. And when these Christian wingnuts that believe in an Apocalypse in their own generation have the keys to this nation's nuclear arsenal, they will have the power to bring it about, as foretold in the Apocalypse (Revelation).

And so many people here wonder why so many in Southwest Asia despise the United States and think it restricts free religious practice; the best proof that this is not so would be to support our Constitution's First Amendment guarantees of religion. Yet these same wingnuts are working just as hard to tear it out of the Bill of Rights, not believing that when the First Amendment is in tatters that the vast new powerful laws could be used against their religious beliefs as well. Or anyone who does not toe the religious party line of the Tea Party wingnuts or other such radicals.

The best defense for religious freedom is the defense of all religious freedom, including the freedom to have no religion at all. They do not see that the Soviet Union's constitution also had guarantees of religious freedom. The Soviet Union did not have religious freedom because the Soviet Constitution prohibited it; they did not have it because they put soldiers in the churches.

I'm not voting; it's a lost cause, and I need the time to build a bunker or apply for political asylum in another country. I have no doubt where Wiccans will stand on the political enemies list when these folk get elected by well-meaning, but uninformed, sheep.

[Epimethean]

Not voting is never a good thing: It lets the real idiots run amok instead of at least encountering the mere morons.

[Anymouse]

Not voting is never a good thing: It lets the real idiots run amok instead of at least encountering the mere morons.

Attributed to Stalin: (not phrased exactly) It is not the voters who have the power, it is the people who count the votes who have the power.

[Minimalist]

Don't forget people like Michelle Bachmann, who had to spend a sizable portion of her campaign denying she had dabbled in witchcraft as a teen.

Um, no. That was the other silly twat. And no, not Palin either. But rather Christine O'Donnell

http://abcnews.go.com/News/bill-maher-ai...d=11674862


I realize that with republican silly twats they should wear numbered jerseys to tell them apart.

[Anymouse]

Don't forget people like Michelle Bachmann, who had to spend a sizable portion of her campaign denying she had dabbled in witchcraft as a teen.

Um, no. That was the other silly twat. And no, not Palin either. But rather Christine O'Donnell
http://abcnews.go.com/News/bill-maher-ai...d=11674862
I realize that with republican silly twats they should wear numbered jerseys to tell them apart.

I stand corrected. I have trouble keeping my wingnuts sorted properly. We need to go on the metric system.

[Minimalist]

Not your fault. They have too many assholes to keep track of.

[MilesTailsPrower]

A big reason people don't create their own religion is because a large chunk of theists automatically believe what their parents believed in. Religion is passed down from generation to generation like bad genetics and the cycle isn't broken until someone dares question the garbage they are fed. Considering religions like Christianity have the fear element, most people are afraid to even think outside the box out of the lingering belief that god might roast their soul on an open fire if they do.

I was talking to my extremist christian friend, I asked him if he was a "free-thinker" he said yes without knowing what it even meant. Then I told him a "free-thinker" is a atheist and states a load of shit out of the bible about if you deny me in front of your friends and I will deny you in front of my father, then he went on to say that he never said it and the bible never said it. God didn't strike him down with lightning but it sounds like religion is only real to you when it suits you best?

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Those that believe in the teachings of a religion do not believe that it is "made up".

Those who disagree, even a little,have been making up their own religion for thousands of years. A very great many were deaded by members of the dominant superstition. (such as Christianity).

Although I think LDS are very imaginative, (EG baptising dead Jewish Holocaust victims) I have a special soft spot for New Guinea cargo cults. A graphic example of what can be achieved with a mixture of empirical evidence and couple of logical fallacies.