Vampier wrote:...I have always viewed "religion" as only the invention of man. Music is to me vastly more spiritual in that it is an expression of man. Religion has shown itself to be a Machine of Great Destruction since it's conceptions. It is always used as a method of control, an excuse, a justification and even an enlightenment. The history of religion is a horror story.
Where ever religion has been or is the result is great cruelty not enlightenment. Intense beliefs cause intense hostility. These forums even demonstrate that from time to time. Yod, I agree with you about the difference between faith and it's force and the reality of religion ... that is it's history. This is chronicled well over the last thousand years of religious gore
"The christian glorifies in the death of a pagan because thereby Christ himself is glorified"
St. Bernard of Clairvaux
The Crusades...The Inquisitions...India's Thugs...The Zionists...The Thirty Years War...Islamic Jihads...Russian Pogroms...Gandhi's murder...Northern Ireland...Africa...Sri Lanka...The Nazi Holocaust was rooted in religious hatred...Palestine...Israel... religion keeps mankind in groups of hostile camps. Religion divides people and breeds inhumanity.
Stalin killed hundreds of thousands in his first "Great Purge" of 1937-38 against his enemies of which many were religious. The same can be said of the "Moscow Trials". His gulags and terrors included many priests and their followers. Proscription Lists, NKVD, deportations and entire population transfers, collectvization, Dekuiakization, resulting famines, The Law of Spikelets ...all included ethnic religions and I might add have versions of them in the news and realities of today.
Stalin believed religion to be an opiate of the masses that needed to be removed. His government did promote atheism ... his "Society of the Godless". From 1930 onwards it became dangerous and at times fatal to be publicly religious. Stalin persecuted the Russian Orthodox Church almost to extinction. Up to only days before his death relious sects were being outlawed and persecuted. He also went after musicians and artists as well. Ta.
As a former atheist, I know about all that stuff and much more. It was instrumental in my coming to faith, actually.
I will contend that faith and religion are separate animals that are unrelated, though they might look similar from the outside. Though I would be labeled a christian, I have always been a rebel against the church. I believe what we have today is a bastardized version of the original faith mixed with greek Temple worship.
The original community of faith were people that loved and blessed each other. Then came Rome and the gentile takeover of the jewish faith. And as far back as the so-called "early church fathers" it has been a horrible counterfeit of what happened in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago.
But alas, I'm not against christians....just the theological structure that was used to usurp the Kingdom promised to Israel (which is still to come and right on schedule). You don't find the early community manipulating people with forced baptisms, coerced conversions, mandatory confessions, or any man-made creeds to oblige.
Nope, that only happened once they let the gentiles in. And there went the neighborhood. This "church" has been the biggest obstacle to faith in history. I see the Vatican as not much different than Stalin, and the Protestant "reformation" as a slightly different version without military power.
But it isn't biblical faith to kill anyone, nor to oppress them, nor to manipulate and control them. That is the exact opposite of what the Holy Spirit does in a person and therefore, yes, a man-made religion.
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