The Danger of Organized Religion

This is a series about ending self-sabotage to improve the prosperity you manifest for yourself.  As part of that process you must identify the subconscious negative beliefs you possess and replace them with beliefs that are positive, empowering ones.  There are four main culprits that create the vast majority of your limiting beliefs.  In this post, we looked at the first of these, the education system.  Then in this post, we explored the second culprit, government.  Now let’s explore the third offender, organized religion.

The majority of people involved in organized religion are well-meaning. But they don’t realize they’re infected with the very memes they’re programming you with.  One of the sneakiest things about memes is they parasitize the host and cause him or her to unknowingly perpetuate the meme.

The religious memes are deeply centered in self-worth (or more specifically, the lack of it) – with most religions advocating that you are pitiful, unworthy, undeserving, or even inherently evil, in need of redemption. Whether we look at the Christian concept of original sin, the Buddhist 8-fold path, the Hindu doctrine of karma, the Jewish Covenant, or the Muslim Code of Law – they are all set up with the basic presupposition that you are a flawed being needing salvation.

If, as a child, you were taught that you were born a sorry sinner, aren’t worthy, are meant to suffer in this lifetime, won’t reach enlightenment until another 44 lifetimes, or you’ve been reincarnated in this lifetime to pay penance for a past lifetime – it’s a pretty safe bet that you’ll grow into adulthood with low self-esteem and worthiness issues.

This can lead to self-sabotage behavior in your health, relationships, and career.  An example of this scenario in action is the millions of LGBTQ people who are unknowingly homophobic or transphobic.  They might have finally accepted that they’re gay, but still have all the unresolved guilt and worthiness issues they received from organized religion as a child.  This leads to subconscious self-hate.  And that can lead them to self-destruct with unsafe sex, addictions like crystal meth, or even suicide.

The most destructive mind virus of organized religion is the central tenet promoting that you are meant to suffer here, to demonstrate your worthiness for the afterlife. (When supposedly, the really good stuff comes.)

Essentially these religions are operating unregulated cosmic “frequent flier” programs.   If you acquire enough points (for the stuff you do or don’t) in this lifetime, you qualify for the award (salvation, nirvana, reincarnation, 72 virgins, eternal life, heaven, etc.).  Depending on the religion, you can earn enough qualifying points if you prostrate yourself enough, beg for forgiveness enough, say enough “Hail Mary’s,” ambush enough American soldiers, rub enough rosary beads, pray enough, fly enough planes into skyscrapers, blow up enough abortion clinics, kill enough Jews, or send enough money to the televangelist. Personally, I prefer to take my chances trading in my miles to Delta for an award trip to Hawaii, rather than hoping for eternal life from a televangelist on cable, but that’s just me.

While religious proponents argue that religion provides inspiration and hope, I would argue that for most people, this is false hope, because it is based on superstitions from the Stone Age.  And the inspiration doesn’t help you build internal worth and self-esteem, but instead involves out-sourcing your belief to a sky god, in the hopes he/she/it will protect you.

Happy, well-adjusted people don’t need religion.  But like governments, religions need you to need them.   Over the centuries this reality has created a survival mechanism requiring them to over-index on the unworthiness propaganda and tantalize you with redemption. This has produced hundreds of millions of people who believe they will only receive their salvation if they accept that they are inherently flawed, undeserving, and unworthy.

If you fall prey to this programming, you doubt your abilities and set lower goals.  You pass up opportunities that could advance you.  And if you overcome this somehow and begin to become healthy, happy or wealthy – you’ll probably subconsciously self-sabotage yourself.

The mind viruses and limiting beliefs propagated by religion usually create the most severe negative results.  Because religion indoctrinates their followers with the same methods other cults do, the memes they propagate are deeply engrained and emotionally charged to the people infected by them.  Arguably no force on earth has created more suffering, destruction and death than organized religion.

These three sources of mind viruses we’ve discussed lead us to the fourth, most treacherous one – the datasphere.

The datasphere provides an omnipotent multiplier effect to all of the limiting mind viruses perpetuated by the education system, governments, and organized religion. 

And that’s what we’ll discuss in the next post.  Until then, please share your thoughts below.

Peace,

- RG