Why do I call it a carcass? Because I think its dead. I think that religion is beginning to be replaced by spirituality. What’s the difference? Well religion is more like a club that you get initiated into. Some ancient dudes took spirituality from the people, organized it into a set of rules and rituals, then put themselves in charge and passed down its leadership from generation to generation. If you wanted to have power over people you wouldn’t become a politician. You would become a priest. So you join the club, get initiated, then you meet every Sunday and sometimes on special days that aren’t Sunday but are even more special than Sunday. You do everything as a group. You listen to what the man performing the weekly ritual tells you. Sometimes he tells you what to think. He might say “Abortion is wrong because thats how I interpreted such and such line from my 2000 year old book written by people looking to serve their own agenda just as I am today”. Well, maybe he’s not that blunt about it but you know Thats what he means.
Now spirituality is not something created by man. Its harder to grasp. Its different for everyone but the same in that everyone can be in touch with their own spirituality if they wanted and if you have a conscience or instincs (I hope to hell you have both or your a poorly put together person) then you can be spiritual. Spirituality is about acknowledging imperfection and seeing the beauty in it. Its about understanding that there is something out there greater than ourselves. A spiritual person does the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing, not because he or she is afraid of going to hell. Spiritual people don’t have an infantile image of god as a man or being of any kind really, that is on a cloud watching what we do. To the spiritual person God is a force like a wind that blows down a tree or the electricity running my computer. Spiritual people acknowledge and more often are more aware that they and every other person ARE God. Now I won’t explain that last statement that everyone is God because its a perfect example of the difference between religion and spirituality. Those who are spiritual will understand what I mean and those who are deeply religious will believe that I am arrogant and actually believe that I have godlike powers.
I’ve always had a distaste for religion. I’ve always felt it was disingenuous. My father always told me that its always the ones who are in church every week giving the most to the collection plate and playing the role of the perfect christian that are the biggest hypocrites of all. And I saw exactly what he was talking about when something was revealed about one of those people he was talking about. What she did was not a very christian thing to do. I know its bad for the argument not to explain what happened but I don’t care I just don’t want to say what happened.
Religion is dangerous. It teaches people to simplify life into black and white terms. Its been 2000 years since Jesus. His teachings are timeless but to dig into specific details of the bible and say that what you read is proof positive that something is wrong or right is ludicrous. We’ve grown so much as humans since then and some of us are trying to hold us back with their ancient book and their newfound 2000 year old mindset. I hope some of these people move on over to the side of spirituality. For the spiritual person there is room for faith AND knowledge. You can believe in God and you don’t have to reconcile science and your faith with ridiculous pseudo-science like creationism.
You CAN keep your faith and you don’t have to believe that dinosaurs were here 4000 years ago. I mean c’mon. Some of the things these people say are… well there’s just no word for how retarded it is.
