Please Die Fighting for My Rights

[danax6]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

Yes, it is. But, there are many lesser denominations that border on illegitimacy. In fact, I would not place Scientology in the genre of religion; remember Scientology was at first secular. But, that is just me. But, my point was that to bring up one or two comaratively very small quasi-religions to negate his rather valid point was a non-sequitor. Brandon was correct about pretty much all religions supporting his point. In fact, even Scientology supports it.

Again, people just hate that other people have religion. And, on some level, I do not balme them because organized religion has oppressed people or made them feel oppressed for centuries.

Interestingly, I would like to know how many people here loathe that religion exists at all? I am not talking about money making organized religion. I am talking about the personal belief in a higher power, etc. How many people automatically smirk and have the unsupressable urge to mock that by calling naive or the believer a "fu*king idiot" while ignoring the repeated clarification by the poster. How is being that judgmental any different than the than judgemental nature assigned, incorrectly IMO, to Brandon?

I think the world would be a better place if people just let other belive in what they want. Sadly, organized religion cannot tolerate this ideal. The men controlling them want, instead, to assert religion as a powerful mans to control society and, ergo, money. But, Brandon repeatedly said he was not soming from that angle, yet no one really believed him and instead some chose seemingly automatically to mock him.

There's a difference between stating an opinion or passing judgment, and I think that's where the line becomes blurry for a lot of people. I certainly try to not pass judgment, but that doesn't mean that I don't have certain opinions about matters that aren't close to my own heart. I compare it to sports. I root for a certain team, and I can say all I want about people that support another team, possibly even the competition, but I'd never tell them they should root for my team because otherwise they'd be bad, weird or dumb people. Of course then there are the hooligans, like in religion there are fundementalists, and I don't think anybody is morally required to approach that particular matter with an open mind. But I'm getting off track here...

I am not saying that Brandon was passing judgement, but the fact remains that he failed to answer a lot of my questions all the while going on how I can't see that God is everywhere and asking how my life can possibly have any meaning because of that. I don't see that as being curious about why I believe what I believe and I suspect he really wasn't interested in that either. Whether that be me, Carrie, Sharon, or anyone else that posted in this thread.