Posts

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Poking Religion

Lately, I’ve been doing social media posts that don’t hold back on the foundational theologies and doctrines of Christianity. As most people know, I’ve been very public about deconstructing my beliefs and the processes behind this.

One thing that I’ve found fascinating is how any attack on a person’s religious beliefs is usually taken as an attack on the person themselves.

This is understandable because of how powerful religious beliefs are. They govern our whole world view – from how we see ourselves, others, the state of the world, and our eternal destiny, so when someone challenges the very foundations of those beliefs, we can tend to get very defensive, because we’ve invested our lives into them.

Many don’t notice that in all my controversial opinions, I never actually attack the person, and go out of my way to make it clear that although I may find their beliefs completely untenable, I also completely understand why they believe them, and respect their sincerity with genuine empathy (mostly… I have my moments!), remembering only too well that I’ve been there myself.

I also try to make it very clear that underneath it all, the real enemy is dogma – the absolute conviction that our beliefs are the incontrovertible truth and everyone else is absolutely wrong. There are many of course, who are willing to concede that there’s room to accept various interpretations of traditional views and biblical writings, as long as they don’t undermine the foundations.

Religion thrives by claiming its inherent and inerrant truth.

But I often get challenged by people claiming that I’m also being dogmatic about my opinions, which on the surface sounds legit, so really, it comes down to looking at the substance of various claims that religion presents, and my own stance on dogma.

The whole idea of challenging dogmatic thoughts/beliefs/religious systems is not to promote yet another “truth” and replace them with its own dogma. It’s about helping people to see that all religious/spiritual and philosophical beliefs are subjective. There is absolutely nothing that can be proven to make any one system the “winner”.

If people ask, I happily present my personal views and why I find them to be the most viable. I’ll even engage in deep discussion as to why this is the case, and also have a Facebook page where I present my ideas.

But I do not hold my views as dogma, because there’s no way I can prove them! They feel right to me at the moment, but I’m also evolving and growing, constantly looking at “life, the universe and everything” to see what I can glean to broaden my outlook, and most importantly, to bring unity and love to the world.

So if you’ve been offended by my provocative poking of sacred cows, it could be that you’re far more locked in dogma than you realise.

Most importantly, unconditional, universal love is the end game, and sometimes we need a bit of a kick to break through our thought patterns to achieve this.

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Taboos

Everyone has their favourite “taboo” topic, but religion is one of those universal taboos.

I don’t mean taboo as in “don’t talk about it”. I mean as in “we must respect each others religious beliefs”. To that, I say bullshit! Religious dogma, in all its variants, has caused more “hell on earth” than any other single factor. So that’s a big yeah/nah from me.

Of course, we do well to respect each other’s humanity, exercise compassion and empathy etc, but we have managed, as a species, to be unable to separate religious beliefs from our identity as a human being. We simply aren’t very good at applying rational thought to those beliefs.

That doesn’t mean we should abandon religion. It simply means that religion must be open to the same scrutiny and objective analysis as any other part of our life. This also means that we must recognise our spiritual needs as human beings and the influence of our emotions and “gut feelings” – everything goes into the mix.

We are so incredibly offended when someone challenges our beliefs. However, beliefs must be challenged if we are to grow as a species – grow in unity, love, compassion and ways that build a better society.

I love to challenge ALL belief systems and provoke people to look at why they believe what they believe. Nothing is taboo for me, and nothing should be taboo for anyone.

If you are upset by someone questioning your “god” and your beliefs, then you should be asking yourself why you are offended – why is it your job to defend those beliefs so passionately?

Not one single god or religion is objectively provable. So believe whatever you want, but if someone challenges you, have the maturity to at least recognise that.

What an amazing world it would be if we all stopped protecting our precious taboos!