I hate religion. All of them.

I've learned that what drives hatred, war, greed, and ignorance aren't the ideologies themselves (usually), but the people who purposefully misrepresent such beliefs, paint truth in a different light, and then spread it to the masses. Unfortunately, these people also happen to be in high positions of either power or the church.

Individually I find many people that believe in faith or religions do have open minds and aren't traditional hard-core conservatives. Those that are lead sheltered lives and don't bother to venture out to find their own understanding of the world we live in or the universe for fear of breaking the comfortable barrier they've lived in for so long. In their minds, what they learned from a book that other like-minded people confirmed for them to be true time and time again can't possibly be wrong even if put in front of scientific evidence that seems to contradict that very understanding. To them, that is faith, and that's all they need.

The problem with a lot of people (not all) today who follow religions is they follow blindly. They don't try to analyze things as they don't want to. They'd prefer to let their leaders make decisions for them even if their leaders are wrong which I've personally witnessed. I guess this is why I have a problem with organized religion. I don't think there's anything wrong with going to church, but when you stop questioning things, let other people make your decisions for you, that's when problems begin to arise.

As a Christian who chose to become one in high school, meaning it was my decision, not my parent's decision or anyone else's, I struggled with the concept of believing everything literally from a book written thousands of years ago by people we can't often times even confirm existed. Even now, I cannot subscribe to the idea that everything written in the Bible is meant to be taken literal and prefer to understand it from a metaphorical perspective. That said, I'm skeptical about many things and look at the world and the universe through a scientific lens while keeping an open mind.

/r/offmychest Thread