ARE BELIEFS NECESSARY?

Heal others by hoping for them.  People's immune systems and their hearts get a boost when they know somebody hopes for the best for them.  Hope is better than faith and you are better rid of faith than rid of hope.

THE PROBLEMS WITH BELIEFS
 
The site www.nobeliefs.com/beliefs.htm argues that belief in anything is harmful and unnecessary. It recognises that once you start believing you must also hold that no other belief should be tolerated. What you are doing then is vowing to treat reality as if you are not wrong which signifies intolerance towards any contrary viewpoint which is exactly the same thing as being intolerant to those who disagree with you. It says instead of believing in stuff you should only think that it is true for thinking that something is true is less strong than belief and is more open-minded. The site argues that belief is to blame for religious terrorism. Yes, religion is to blame for all the evil worked in its name and in the name of its Jehovah for it should be presenting its theology not as fact but as a hypothesis that is useful and which can be abandoned if it proves bad for us or untenable. Religious faith is a severe attack on human rights.
 
I have this to say. Opinion which is a weak form of belief is intolerant too but not to the extent of stronger opinion which we call belief and which faith is based on. The Christian faith demands a strong faith in Jesus and obeying him even when we are going to come off the worst. For example, the Church prefers a gay man to endure a lifetime of depression and loneliness than for him to have a relationship with a decent bloke. The nice thing about opinion is that you want to change it if you get further light.
 
The reason religion thrives is because people develop an emotional attachment to it and their feelings get biased towards supporting it at least to some extent and passing on the conditioning to their children. Many religions are very crafty and make sure that this undue development happens. Therefore their clergy and parents have a lot to answer for when anybody they have religiously influenced commits a religiously motivated crime. Religion kills because religion needs to condition people to survive and to grow. You only kill because you have been conditioned by outside influences and nature to do it. Anybody or anything that exercises an undue conditioning influence on you is the cause of what evil you will do as much as you are. We all know that we don’t do evil without bad influence so religion KNOWINGLY does this harm. The religions might pretend to themselves that they do not but they wouldn’t need to pretend unless they already knew.
 
Examples of how easily people have been conditioned follow.
 
The murderous revulsion for Jack the Ripper though his crimes are nothing compared to Tony Blair and President Bush as exemplified in the war with Iraq and who got others to do their dirty work. The same could be said of many world leaders. The pope has murdered more people with his tongue than Hitler in forbidding contraceptives which protect against AIDS. Yet he is looked up to too much.
 
The guilt people feel about sex.
 
The way people look at extreme and vulgar violence on the television and accept it and there is an uproar if hardcore sex is shown. The way they don’t mind exposing their kids to the violence.
 
The way people are conditioned to marry though marriage is really about being insecure and afraid and trying to keep somebody tied to you for life. If you really valued your partner above all you wouldn’t need marriage. Marriage would insult your love by saying that the rite is more important than the binding power of love. You marry without caring if the lucky partner will make you less happy than somebody else could. You also don’t mind if your partner could be better off with somebody else.
 
The way people are conditioned to believe in God and Jesus. Why these and nothing else? Every single religious activity and doctrine contains the marks of conditioning for it degrades human beings and promotes the agenda of exploiters in religion.
 
The way people are uncomfortable with people who are different, for example, black people and gay people.
 
Nearly everything in my writings is a criticism of the errors people have been led into by the Church and by the law of the land and by society. We are all conditioned to a huge extent – more than we will ever know.
 
The way the law has not tried to make the Church stop causing terrorism and holy wars. One important way to do this would be to enforce it to drop sectarian doctrines like “The Roman Catholic Church is the one true Church of Christ”, and “Jesus is the Only Way to God”, and “The Eucharist when celebrated by a validly ordained priest alone is the body and blood of God”, and “The Bible is the only inspired word of God we have”. These doctrines insult and command opposition to other Churches. The Roman Catholic Church is boasting that it can be more sure of itself than other Churches can be of themselves. That provocative claim makes its sweetness towards them to be pretty superficial. To teach that Jesus is the only way to God is to claim they know better than anybody who says some other god, perhaps Krishna, is the only way to God and it also claims that if the real saviour is somebody else they are not going to try and find out for they have found the only way to God – madness!. It is a beacon to sectarianism. There are many groups today that claim that they can change food and drink into God and a different God than Jesus at that. The Church of Rome will command that Catholics protect the Eucharist against sacrilege with their lives but they won’t do that for the Eucharist of the pagans. That shows just how dangerous religion is for one religion’s good is another religion’s evil and we have enough to be divided among ourselves about. Sectarianism is basically claiming to have a monopoly on spiritual truth and how to bring God to people that will maximise their chances of becoming holy. Only force can cause change and it needs to be done for the Church will never change.
 
The State should have the Church adopt a more Buddhist approach and use a Christian version of this logic, “I am not saying my Buddhist faith is right or wrong but I am saying it is right for me and works for me and it might work for you do”. That takes the nastiness and the arrogance out of the whole affair by putting what is best for people first and not what is best for the Bible God, Jesus and the pope and the Church system of dogma first. Humanists and Atheists should be deploying the same logic as the Buddhist.
 
It is impossible to be impressed by religious faith when it makes harmful claims and the virtue of most of the teachers of religion is not impressive. Any help they give is hoped to draw people to the “light” of their gospel so the motivation is disgraceful. Those that command us in the name of God whose place they say they take to look after the sick and do other hard and painful things in the name of Jesus Christ should be doing more themselves.
 
Belief in religion is not necessary. Opinion is better for it is less arrogant. If Catholics only had the opinion that Catholicism was true and Muslims only had the opinion that Islam was true there would have been less bloodshed between them. Yet the Bible puts belief or faith up at the top. It says if you don't believe in God or Jesus you will be lost in Hell forever and have to endure everlasting torment. Its God says faith or belief is a gift he gives. If belief is bad then so is Christianity.