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Quote Originally Posted by Decker View Post
Is it the religion itself or the people that run it?

There's always two sides to the sword(or however that saying goes), and there are both good and bad sides to religion. Many of the time it is the moral basis for which society lives by nowadays, yet then there are those who it up for the rest of us or misuse it for their own purposes which in turn would turn many away as I have witnessed. But unlike you saying Religion owes us an apology, I tend to see it as the crazy that owe US an apology for messing with religion in the first place


Well I could make the distinction between organized religion and personal faith, but I didn't see the need. One person's personal faith is unlikely to change the world for the worse, unless he's a mass murderer or the owner of a nation. However, when someone's faith becomes the faith of the masses, that's when bad stuff starts to happen. It's organized religion which is the culprit.

When one has personal faith, one does not need people to "run" thier religion. However, when one subscribes to one of the major religions and believes that they need to have some guy wearing a dress telling them what to believe, how to act, how to pray, which passages of which book to read; that's when people start to worship what fallible men have come up with, rather than something genuinely spiritual.

One can have religious faith without having to attend some group. And if so, they tend not to cause trouble. It's the big organized faiths which start wars and condemn one another for being heretical.