Hello, I am a soon-to-be year eleven student and I am looking over some of my R.E material and I have drawn up to a conclusion concerning of what religion really is, which is of course, a major part of the R.E criteria. Unfortunately, I have been told by every R.E teacher I have ever had that I am very opinionated and often cast biased views on my work, which can in some situations (a balanced argument), prove a disadvantage. Below I have given a brief paragraph on my theory of the concept of religion, I would be eternally grateful I you could give some input about it, or maybe even give a non-biased opinion or a theist’s opinion.
I personally believe that religion is an ingenious form of social control, one that not only has a devastatingly controlling effect, but is also one of the hardest to remove from your life. The law is the physical restriction that the government imposes upon it’s citizens to control them, the law works on a very simplistic basis: An eye for an eye. If you break the law, you will receive a fine, be sent to jail or even just forced into officially apologising to those you harm during your crime. The power behind a government’s law is the fear and intimidation caused by the many deterrents that the government uses to enforce the law: TV and radio broadcasts, warning posters and documentaries. Now what religion is just like the law, but instead of one upheld by a community and its leaders, religion is a law upheld by the individual, by morals and mental barriers. If you were to break one of the governments’ barriers down for example: you break the law, you get sent to prison. If you break one of your mind’s own mental barriers that have been put in place by your religion, then you will hate yourself for your sin, but it is the religion that is telling you that that action was sinful, and therefore you should feel guilt. These moral traps that are sins are always the same downward trajectory of self loathing and redemption. And the only way to repent your sins and to purify your soul: to seek forgiveness from your religion’s god. But what if God, the irrefutable power and creator of all existence, was just a creation of a man’s mind?
In general people react badly when the law is biting down on their lives with taxes, and harsher restrictions, but when we clash with our religion, we blame ourselves, not the perfect being that we pay so much respect to. So when a government failed, which they have done in the past and will always do so in the end, they replaced laws of actions and words with something unquestionable, something that cannot be disproven. A deity, or a god is above all else, but the reason why we can never discover the origins of this god or disprove it, is because you cannot undermine something that does not have foundations. There is no physical presence to be examined, no possible way of definite contact with it, so how can we say its not real if it was never proven in the first place? Religion is a vicious circle of ignorance of the theist’s and the naively given faith of the theist’s, what you believe will be a real as you want it to be. And that is why religion is still burning, just an idea I believe, I put my faith into science and physical objects that can be thoroughly examined, but a god that can’t even be seen? Why put your faith into that?
Thank you all for reading my material, I hope you found it interesting, please reply with some input.
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