What I believed about religion as a young man.

Forums: Spirituality And Religion, God, Hypocrisy, Crimes Against Humanity, Exclusive Cults
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I now submit a post that takes a somewhat different slant to my previous post and leave it to you to comment

The likes of exclusive cult or exclusive religion, are in their opinion all going go to heaven and watch to from there in eternal happiness, while the huge majority of us or some 99.99999% of the rest of humanity are sent to burn in hell, day and night, forever and forever. And to make this even more ridiculous, what about all the humans that have lived since civilization began, estimated by some as many as 60 billion souls?

I mention below a few of the absurdities that I have observed over the years.

The Catholics believe in the infallibility of the Pope. It is impossible to ascribe infallibility to the leader of the Catholic Church, when you look back on the monumental mistakes made this religion over the years, all with the blessing of the same infallible Pope. Infallibility means never having to say sorry!

Muslims on the other hand seem to think that the murder of innocents can justified by objectives of their religion. Those that execute these crimes are little worse than those Muslims who commit no such crimes, yet stay silent! They all stand condemned by their religion.

This is different only in degree to the Catholic and Anglican leaders who knowingly hid paedophiles in the church leadership. Yet these same religions condemn gay people who commit no crime and even if by some stretch of the imagination, you decide that this is a crime, and then it is, at the very worst, a victimless crime.

How much worse is it to condone the abuse of a child, by a person placed in a position of absolute trust? If you can’t trust a man of "God"?, then who can you trust?

The Israelis and Hezbollah kill innocent people and both of them do this in the name of God. Surely they can see that the God to which they both ascribe infinite benevolence, would not countenance the murder of innocents or otherwise.

Surely they can see that they both can’t be right. Surely they can see that if they both believe in the infinite benevolence of God, that they must both be wrong. But of course they can’t!

Buddhist’s are not involved in wars, abuse and don’t enforce their teachings on others. Buddhists believe that you should kill no living creature and this is an admirable philosophy. Yet they eat meat. Their reasoning behind this is that the person eating the meat does not kill the animal.

Lest I stand condemned by those that follow me for these views, let me add that I despise religion, not God or the people that worship God through these religions. For these people I have only compassion, for all people need meaning in their lives and need structure and tradition against which they can measure their worth. To the extent that religion serves these ends, it is good. To the extent that it serves the ends of its leaders and founders, then it is not good.

If there is a God, these leaders of the church will face him, as will I, to justify the deceit and the wrongdoings committed in his name during our lifetimes. I expect however to face a benevolent God, who will see my misdeeds in the context of my life and my ability to comprehend and interpret, as will he those billions of people less fortunate than me. He will disregard the religion they pursued, evaluating only their life and deeds.

It is my opinion that we are put into this mortal life, which is a school, in which we are meant to learn from the events during life, and to evolve into higher dimensions of reality, after we pass over, or descend, if we choose to do wrong and depravity.

Somehow we must all account to a higher power, for our actions or lack of actions during our very brief moment on planet earth, in the vastness infinite eternity. We must remember that energy cannot be created or destroyed only changed and in my opinion it is just a change in energy form that we undergo after we die.

To illustrate my disillusion with exclusive religion, a case in point was Jimmy Swagggard, a hell and brimstone evangelist, who screamed and shouted from the pulpit against all sins, especially sexual sins and depravity, he was caught red handed at a brothel trying to secure the favours of a prostitute for the night.

A few days later in front of his congregation , he wept and wept asking say over and over again “ I have sinned I have sinned” He pleaded with God and his congregation to forgive him, and I think many of them did forgive him for the terrible sin he had done.

However, this sad story did not end there, a week or so after his desperate plea for forgiveness, a police officer pulled over a car for a suspected traffic violation, who do you suppose he found inside the car? No less than Jimmy Swagggard and a prostitute in both in a very in indecent and compromising situation.

Jimmy got off with a warning from the law, but this hypocrite did not learn from his mistakes or from the very words he had preached and screamed about for over 30 years. Twice this hypocrite was caught doing the same act of depravity resulting finally in most of his congregation, not forgiving him and leaving his church, extremely disillusioned like I was.

However, unbelievably, some of his congregation overlooked all his discretion and remained his followers. This was a person who I had admired as a man of God, who preached ethics and morality and now I found out he was nothing but a secret sexual pervert. After that I could never listen, his preaching or to his music and felt his Christian calling was removed from him by God. Off course he was/is not the only hypocrite preacher out there Many of them are puffed up with pride at their supposed

Below is a comment I received from an ex. Pastor About religion

Yes, Alan McDougall that is right, and you know, I was so liberated and truly free once the lord woke me up to the brainwashing lies of the ministry. I was in the ministry for 17 yrs. and followed what I was brainwashed to follow .how do they even get away with this is beyond me. "whatever a man sews, so shall he reaps" and God will not be mocked, is a dead giveaway that god does not have a eternal torture chamber to abort his children in, that were taught wrong, dressed wrong, talked wrong, or got brainwashed by the wrong preacher.

In addition, the fact, if you reap what you sew, then why would he punish you again? Does a non-Christian who lives a fairly modest and good life not sew what he reaps is he not punished by God the righteous judge in a in a fair way in, accordance with the severity of his sins. Are his sins infinite like eternal damnation? That would be double jeopardy. {2 punishments for one crime}.I have been screaming like a bungee for folks to wake up!

Comments please!