Part 2 of "Religion Seeks To Kill Spirituality"

This is a continuation of my previous blog post from Tuesday March 16 2010 entitled "Religion Seeks To Kill Spirituality".  I got such a huge response from one of the shortest blogs I've ever written.  One of those readers sent me a message that I read and intended to write a short thank you message to reply to him.  Well, it didn't turn out as short as I intended.  I guess I still had a whole lot to say on this issue, and his response was the catalyst that sparked the fuse (lol).  So I'd like to thank and acknowledge him for being the inspiration for this blog post.

His message is written below in red and italics, and my response follows it in dark blue:

We agree on this issue. Sometimes I feel like Socrates and that the state of South Carolina will figure out a way to put me to death for not believing.

I have no doubt that some of these evangelicals would put that into law in a split second if they could. It's all very very sad, and it's something I will NEVER ever understand. There's something very dark in the human spirit that religion seems to prey upon. Like when slavery was legal in this country. These slave owners considered themselves Christians. They had no problem committing some of the worst most heinous atrocities on a fellow human being on a daily basis, and they saw nothing wrong with this. Those slave owners weren't some dumb illiterate back-woods hicks that didn't know any better. They were educated highly respected pillars of their community, and still they saw nothing wrong with what they were doing. We were all born with an inherent sense of right and wrong. I know murder is wrong, with or without a law that tells me so. When we start looking in a book to gage our moral compass, or letting a book written by man tell us how we should live our lives, we lose one of the greatest gifts God has given us, which is FREEWILL and the ability to think for ourselves. Once we give that up, our minds become easily manipulated. This is so dangerous because the people that we look to for guidance may have deceitful motives or devious intentions, but because you gave up your critical thinking abilities, you can't see the evil in this person and in their actions, so you follow him blindly.

I don't want anyone to think I'm bashing Christians, because I'm not at all. I was raised in a very religious Christian home, so I have a great respect for the message it teaches. I'm addressing religion as a whole here, and the beliefs of religious extremist. I do believe in God, and I consider myself a spiritual person, but If you want to give me a label, all I can say is I do not identify myself as "a Christian", and that's because I do not allow other people to define my relationship with God because that's between me and him. I don't expect everyone to agree with me and my way of thinking because I hope after reading this, you'll start to use your gift of "freewill" and "critical thinking" to find your own path and discover what you truly believe.

If you haven't seen this documentary, then I'd suggest you buy a copy and watch it quick.  It covers a lot of the points I made in this blog.  It's informative, but it's done in a humorous way... classic Bill Maher cynicism and wit.  This is a definite MUST SEE.  Here's a link if you want to buy it on Amazon.com Religulous

Or if you're too cheap to buy it, click on the title of this blog entry and you can watch it for free (streaming directly from icefilm site). You can thank me later: