Let’s begin with the profound words of Charles Grandison Finney, an American Presbyterian minister and leader in the Second Great Awakening in the United States. Finney remarked as follows: “If immorality prevails in the land, the fault is ours in a great degree. If there is decay of conscience, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the church is degenerate and worldly, the pulpit is responsible for it.”
Religion is a set of beliefs and rituals that you follow. Godliness is having your moral character conformed to God’s moral character. Following His commandments counts as religion, but it’s also possible to follow a false religion, pay lip-service without acting on it, use religion as a way to make yourself look good, and so forth. “Religion”, just like “science”, is a human behavior separate from the truth that it hopefully centers around.
Or to put it another way, the people who cut victims’ hearts out and threw them off pyramids were pretty religious, but incredibly ungodly. So were the nominally-Christian conquistadors who overthrew them. Religion and spirituality are traditionally linked together, with the latter being a more profound aspect of the former. Lest I forget, we are in a spiritualized society (some would say superstitious society), although it is a secular system.
With the growing disaffection from institutional religion and the more expansive understanding of spirituality, a growing number of people are saying that they are spiritual without necessarily being religious, a seeming paradox. Thus, being spiritual without being religious is a subject and an experience that can stand on its own and has its own integrity. From my personal experience and observation, religion seems like a scam.
Essentially, as we reflect on subject of “A Land Of Deep Religiosity Without Corresponding Results” the big question, is organized religion a scam? In my humble opinion, religion is generally not a scam.
As such, the search for truth has been a chaotic experience for earthlings. Religion is one attempt at defining truth – in a spiritual context.
Religious truths or doctrines or dogma are usually absolute (unique experience in today’s world) and generally brings comfort and peace to their believers and adherents. Religion is a way of offering a form of truth that brings spiritual rewards to people who believe.
Furthermore, It will be unfair to define religion by it’s extreme fringes. It is a scam in it’s fringe and worst elements. It is not a scam in its depth and breadth of contributions to the world, to families and to individuals.
Additionally, any and all religions have their genesis in man’s earliest attempts to understand the world in which they find themselves. Their conclusions may or may not have anything to do with reality and the real essence of religion.
Don’t mind people who try hard to be more catholic than pope. Because, in a depressed economy and the circumstances of the third world countries like Nigeria; It’s a scam to individuals because they take your time money and effort while providing only a really overpriced and delusional social club with bad music and boring motivational speakers.
I mean if you weren’t fooled by the religious aspect, you’d pay little to nothing for the low quality entertainment aspect. It’s a scam to society because they gain an enormous amount of wealth but don’t pay their taxes and waste people’s time that would be better spent learning something true.
Put simply, in much more modern times, in particular since the advent of science has demolished belief after belief in the religious world, the majority of religious leaders must surely know deep in their hearts that the complete lack of evidence to support their belief has doomed it to little more than the myth it is. Knowing this, I fail to see how any thinking person who preaches religion can be doing so for reasons other than the power and control it’s supposed to give them over the lives of others.
In conclusion, permit me to share with us the golden words of Steven J. Fowler, a contemporary English poet, writer and avant-garde artist, and the founder of European Poetry Festival. Fowler profoundly posited: “Nonbelievers are not anti-religious, they are anti-fraud and anti-deception.” As a nonconformist, I completely align with Fowler’s position.
Richard Odusanya
odusanyagold@gmail.com
