God is Dead. Long Live God

I don't like April Fools Day. So I leave it to you to find the trick here.

People seem to have trouble differentiating between the doctrines of a religion and actions of individuals practising a particular religion. People who espouse membership and adherence to a religion are rarely universal in their adherence. We see consumption of alcohol amongst Muslims and Consumption of bacon matzo balls by Jews and Christians wearing tattoos. It might be tempting to dismiss such people as not belonging to the religions they espouse.

And yet. The modern practitioner of Christianity or Islam or Judaism looks very little like practitioners of one hundred years ago, to say nothing of the practitioners of these religions from earlier eras.

But a religion is changed by the actions of it's practitioners. As groups drift apart in their method of adherence, new religious sects form from the difference in application of these religious doctrines.

So it is ridiculous to talk about a religion of peace or a religion of war or a religion of any other ideology. Because a religion is nothing but the actions of the religion's  practitioners.

It is not incorrect to say that none of the people who today identify as Christians practise the same religion as those who identified as Christians one thousand years prior.

So there you have it. Religions are incredibly fragile but incredibly hard to kill. Because religions love in the human mind and reproduce when passed on to another person. But when passed, the old religion stays in the mind that holds it. The new practitioner now hosts the son or daughter of the original practitioner's religion.

Religion is dead. Long live religion.

Why is this? Why is religion so malleable?  Why is religion so resilient and unkillable? Why does religion breed like rabbits and survive like a cockroach?

Because religion is a child of human mind. Because religion is a child built from the needs of the human mind and the history of human evolution. And the human mind keeps going back to religion and keeps reshaping it to suit the needs of the human mind at a given moment in time.

We can't escape religion because it is both a child of and a parasite within our own minds. And so it seems we are destined to give birth to our own religion and let it feed off our own minds. So, if this is the case, you better raise that child right and train it up to serve your needs rather than the needs of some half baked would ve prophet or the needs of some long dead bronze age king.

It's your life. It's your mind. It's your choice. But realize that if you are accepting another's religion as your starting point, you have their ideology to sort through and their intent to overcome. It's the ultimate test and the prize is your mind.

Life is short.
Work is crap.
Join my cult.