Reason to believe

Contrary to the vehement protestations of some, religion is a good thing. The Romans saw it as a credible source of tradition guarded and maintained by the priests. Their sense of duty (for the late stoics, part of the virtue of justice) included piety and even in Plato's Protagoras, piety is just taken for granted as one of the virtues. Piety is a virtue. Embracing religion is a real tangible social contract you can have with your fellow believers over just what practices and norms you will follow. It tends to reject bad norms and embrace good ones. It is the champion of all social institutions -- above schools of philosophy or academia, even -- at eliciting virtue in the people of the world, even in the realm of knowledge which may seem paradoxical to some but nevertheless true. And thus, it is a great loss to any society to genuinely lose its religion.

So, with that said, I say it is a duty to not only support religion through impersonal means such as donations, but to take a personal role in endorsing it. It is not enough to go along with it, but one must adhere to it genuinely. A fraud is vicious even if done with the best of intentions. One must do all they can to believe "without seeing", or in other words, to have faith, an act inimical to most lovers of wisdom but one, in this case, being elicited by the wisdom that comes from knowledge of morality. And, the method for doing such a thing is generally right there in most religions: pray, fast, go without sleep -- asceticize. (Asceticism is good for more than just faith, anyway.) Imagine, especially during trying times where it becomes difficult to maintain ones virtue, that an archangel or God is watching you or that your karma hangs in the balance or whatever it may be. Imagine what they would think and what they would hope for from you or how you could progress.

In time, this mindset becomes automatic -- a conditioned response in which you don't even think about the original motivations for doing it and forget entirely that you don't really believe in all that stuff. Sometimes you may remember just what you did and why you did it, but all theists have moments of doubt in which their faith is challenged. And, the moment you remember is the moment you are also reminded of just how and why you should recover your faith. In this way, your faith can become unindictable and virtually impregnable. So, to the atheists, and to quote the Big Lebowski, "You're not wrong, Walter. You're just an asshole." That is why and how you should believe -- not because of some scientific or philosophical justification for its veracity but because it is a terrible vice not to.

To the Christians, perhaps this is the true meaning of

"Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed."

or even

"Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God."

You don't get to come to God in any other way than through righteousness. Even through knowledge -- science, perhaps, or philosophy -- leads to a corrupt believer that is righteous only because he knows God is watching and not because he wishes He was. Only when you hope for God out of a commitment to leading an upright, Christian life are you allowed to find Him.

So, Christians, atheists, and others, what do we think of something like this? Not authentic enough?

Intrusive, predatory, controlling, mindless garbage in my opinion. Organized religion is a divisive, destructive, elitist and power-hungry concept that has no place in today's world. It would be very much better to just be a spiritual individual on one's own terms of contentment. Simplify.

Intrusive, predatory, controlling, mindless garbage in my opinion. Organized religion is a divisive, destructive, elitist and power-hungry concept that has no place in today's world. It would be very much better to just be a spiritual individual on one's own terms of contentment. Simplify.

But, when one does that, there is no tradition and no communion. Without tradition there is no repository of virtue from a history of fellow members of the religion struggling. You cannot partake of the collective wisdom and encouragement of your church. Without communion there is no social contract of like-minded keepers of the faith. It's just you. And if you are going to do that, then why be spiritual at all and not just philosophize. And, perhaps more to the point, you leave everyone else in the same boat of being entirely on their own with their own faith and out of communion with a larger body of fellow believers all struggling together in the faith.

Don't you think you can accomplish more in terms of the perfection of your soul with others, even if only reading the writings of legendary ascetics and icons of your religion?

I do agree though, religion is a prime target for corruption, perhaps even more so than the legal system. One should expect to see it. Personally, I choose to fight it. It was the worst mistake ever to forsake our religion and let our enemies take it without contest. We needed that. We should have fought to keep it pure. We were a lot stronger than this.

Religion based on faith can not be plausible in the modern era for much longer. There is just to many ideas working against it and for it to endure. To many paradoxes, to much hypocrisy , to much uncertainty etc. In fact I think if it can reemerge and start gaining supporters instead of losing them at a steady pace that we are very likely screwed as a species. Way to much has been set in motion. We blew Pandora's box wide open technologically in the last 200 years and their is no sign of this exponential growth of technology slowing down. For there to be a useful religion in the modern world I think it needs to be practical in nature and not based on faith. I could see the emergence of an vast organized religion based on the worship of the earth in a pragmatic way. Basically it could entail environmentalist organizing and creating an organization with a set of rituals that where in place to push the belief in trying to stem the tide of over consumption that is rampant in many modern industrial nations. These rituals could be used throughout the congregation and to build communities based completely on lifestyle and the spiritual benefits of practicing a that lifestyle .

As I had always maintain, God and religions are critical and very necessity for the majority of human beings on Earth, but ONLY in this primal phase of humanity evolution.
This is so because, human beings were primates not too long ago and the majority do not has the necessary neuronal connectivities in their brain to deal with the cognitive dissonances arising from self-consciousness and being conscious of inevitable death.

There is no doubt, God and religions has their contributions (psychological and others) to humanity in the past and at present. However, with the exponential expansion of knowledge, humanity is expanding its knowledge awareness of the possibility of greater impending global, planetary and galactical, threats that could wipe out the specie in an instant or be catastrophied.

God and religions, with their archaic thoughts, immutable laws are a hindrance to humanity in expediting solutions to the above threats via restraining the promotion of Science and liberating free-thought and freedom. This is reinforced by the majority consensus of faith which lend credence to their goverments to suppress advance of knowledge (note Islamist countries and the creationists) and extremists to continue with their violence. Note 19322 deadly religious-based attacks since 911. http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/

God and religions must be weaned off gradually (not cold turkey) from now and therefrom ASAP. However, they must be replaced with secular approaches that are supported by effective neural connectivities to modulate the primal mother of all fears, the fear of inevitable death oozing from the subliminals. At the rate, the Sciences (especially neuroscience) together with other faculty of knowledge, I am confident God and religions will be merely artifacts of our previous civilization.

[Scott]

It tends to reject bad norms and embrace good ones. It is the champion of all social institutions -- above schools of philosophy or academia, even -- at eliciting virtue in the people of the world, even in the realm of knowledge which may seem paradoxical to some but nevertheless true.

These premises seem to me to indeed support your conclusion, but these premises seem more disagreeable than your conclusion! Do you have any evidence or argument to support this? What about Spectrum's point about religious-based attacks? What about the fact that ancient religious texts support things which we now agree are extremely abhorrent, intersubjectively speaking, including slavery, sacrificing children in religious rituals, and the slaughter of unarmed women and children in war? If anything it seems to me organized religion, especially of the more traditional variety as opposed to the reform variety, is the opposite ofa champion of the modern so-called virtues to which most relatively reasonable people at least pay lip-service to such as not being a violent, selfish, zenophobic, mass-murder-supporting bigot. To reiterate, if religion was -- even just traditionally -- a source of helpful advice, peacefulness and brotherhood, your conclusions that we would want to support it and donate to it -- bring it back to those desired, alleged traditions -- and so forth, but as Spiral Out pointed out, your premises in that regard are false because religion is divisive, both now and in its traditional state.

Moving on, even if your premises were true, there would still be the problem with religion pointed out by Grecorivera5150 dealing with religion being doomed simply because it is so clearly wrong like the idea that thunder is caused by Thor's hammer being shaken off shortly after the emergence of a contradictory scientific explanation of how thunder works.

But, when one does that, there is no tradition and no communion. Without tradition there is no repository of virtue from a history of fellow members of the religion struggling. You cannot partake of the collective wisdom and encouragement of your church. Without communion there is no social contract of like-minded keepers of the faith. It's just you. And if you are going to do that, then why be spiritual at all and not just philosophize. And, perhaps more to the point, you leave everyone else in the same boat of being entirely on their own with their own faith and out of communion with a larger body of fellow believers all struggling together in the faith.

I see two problems with what you are saying:

1) One can have a secular communion without religion. Consider the many secular charities, secular support groups, secular community centers, secular vigils, secular self-help books, secular book clubs.

2) Again, you are basing your arguments on the premise that the advice and traditions of religion are right or helpful. For instance, you claim the church has some kind of "collective wisdom and encouragement", but I think quite the opposite: one is unwise to follow its overall mean, dangerous, divisive advice.

Don't you think you can accomplish more in terms of the perfection of your soul with others, even if only reading the writings of legendary ascetics and icons of your religion?

I don't believe in a soul. Your argument is to give non-believers a reason to support religion (and eventually forget they do not believe), but don't you think many if not most non-believers do not believe in a soul either?

I do agree though, religion is a prime target for corruption, perhaps even more so than the legal system. One should expect to see it. Personally, I choose to fight it. It was the worst mistake ever to forsake our religion and let our enemies take it without contest. We needed that. We should have fought to keep it pure. We were a lot stronger than this.

Again, your false premise is that religion was "pure" in its traditional state or, depending on what you mean by "pure", that its "pure" form is desirable. If anything, reform or 'corrupted' religion is less abhorrent then the pure form, like a half-vampire being less abhorrent than a full-vampire. Indeed, I'd rather have the modern problem of evangelicals following the hateful, divisive teaching of their church/religion by relatively peacefully advocating for denying homosexuals certain civil rights while culturally and verbally being mean to homosexuals than go back to the more religiously pure attitude of stoning homosexuals, adulterers and a myriad of other people to death as instructed by the Jewish/Christian bible.

I cannot agree with the notion that we SHOULD believe things if they facilitate our happiness or society's welfare. Whether religion has facilitated personal or societal well-being is open to debate. However, the debate is irrelevant to whether we "should" believe in it. Honor demands we believe what we think is true, after mature consideration, not that we believe whatever best fits our psychological or social needs.

But, when one does that, there is no tradition and no communion. Without tradition there is no repository of virtue from a history of fellow members of the religion struggling. You cannot partake of the collective wisdom and encouragement of your church. Without communion there is no social contract of like-minded keepers of the faith. It's just you. And if you are going to do that, then why be spiritual at all and not just philosophize. And, perhaps more to the point, you leave everyone else in the same boat of being entirely on their own with their own faith and out of communion with a larger body of fellow believers all struggling together in the faith.

Don't you think you can accomplish more in terms of the perfection of your soul with others, even if only reading the writings of legendary ascetics and icons of your religion?

I do agree though, religion is a prime target for corruption, perhaps even more so than the legal system. One should expect to see it. Personally, I choose to fight it. It was the worst mistake ever to forsake our religion and let our enemies take it without contest. We needed that. We should have fought to keep it pure. We were a lot stronger than this.

Too many problems arise when people try to organize certain things. Community evolves into hierarchies, hierarchies evolve into power structures, power structures evolve into elitist tyranny. There are always power struggles within groups, never with individuals. There is no need for spiritual reinforcement if your spirituality is strong and true to your being. Keep it simple.

Spiral Out Wrote

"Too many problems arise when people try to organize certain things. Community evolves into hierarchies, hierarchies evolve into power structures, power structures evolve into elitist tyranny. There are always power struggles within groups, never with individuals. There is no need for spiritual reinforcement if your spirituality is strong and true to your being. Keep it simple."



There are times when individual spirituality will be impinged upon by social dynamics that will make it almost impossible to act in opposition to they impingement effectively as an individual. I will use the example of environmentalism here again. A large company destroying natural resources in order to extract fuel sources for profit can cause irreversible damage to environments. If an individual has a spiritual connection with an environment that is endangered they can act alone but the likely hood of success is very limited because there are so many dynamic forces that are at work in opposition to an individual's action. As we are social animals some group struggles are worth being involved with in in the hopes of securing a future individual reward. Of course as Scott stated this can be done in a completely secular way but it does not erase the fact that there could be a secular group acting in concert to support a spiritual point of view. Here is where semantics become important and we have to distinguish between what specifically is or must be considered a religious issue or organization and what spiritual issues can be pursued by a group outside of being considered to be religious in nature.

Then the proper course would be to join an activist group supporting your particular cause, this is not spiritually motivated. Spirituality is not rooted in objects, structures, places or the like. It's not about finding battles to fight. It's not about the environment, nationalities, petty differences, mine & yours or who's right or wrong. There is no right or wrong with spirituality. It's just there, as you find it, as you want it to be. Nothing more, nothing less. If you have to scientifically quantify spirituality then you're quite missing the point.

Reason to believe is by the conclusion of the knowledge and wisdom one possesses, now theist (people who believe in afterlife and most importantly divine intervention) acknowledged their reality based upon what they don't understand and on other peoples conclusions, specifically ones created 2000 years ago. From misunderstanding is where they get their Divine interaction possibility, instead of knowing they substitute divine intervention.

You can tell that by how theistic s (ex, christains, jews, muslims) talk when they say stuff like "I have faith in God and the afterlife".

To me, faith means not knowing but betting on it. So when a Christians says that, "to me they are saying i have no idea if the afterlife exist, but ill bet on it!" & the word belief is similar.

I don't put my view of reality in jeopardy on some random idea based on misunderstanding, especially something as huge and life changing as in the factor of god being an influence on our actions in the physical world.

So basically, when peoples faith becomes concrete and has to much pride/tradition/financial gains/comfortably is when the problems of social organized religious beliefs get their problems. And that's with all groups and perspectives, theistic s, atheistic s and deistic s.

And theres a difference between organizational corruption and the individual person corruption.

I cannot agree with the notion that we SHOULD believe things if they facilitate our happiness or society's welfare. Whether religion has facilitated personal or societal well-being is open to debate. However, the debate is irrelevant to whether we "should" believe in it. Honor demands we believe what we think is true, after mature consideration, not that we believe whatever best fits our psychological or social needs.

Well, I agree that as a point of honor you should not assert things you do not believe, or, at least, not for something like this. That is why it is not enough for you to just go along with it without eliciting the belief in yourself. It is precisely a point of honor that I say you should have the belief, though. It isn't because it is true. It is because it is possible or really even just conceivable, and that is enough to make having the belief possible. Beyond that, any intellectual inegrity you might sacrifice in coming to the belief through less than legitimate philosophical means is more than outweighed by the benefits, even from the standpoint of pure knowledge, of having the belief.

Without it, you will lack the virtue to be able to draw correct conclusions on a consistent basis about a whole host of other more important issues, namely concerning moral philosophy. I say this not because these other conclusions are derived from the assertion that God exists but because it is largely weakness of character that blocks us from understanding morality -- not a lack of philosophical sophistication. In fact, this weakness of character often bleeds over to issues that aren't even obviously related to moral philosophy at all. To some extent we all have the fortitude to pursue knowledge despite our limitations, but even the strongest among us suffers from such a weakness and so ends up making bad judgements and drawing the wrong conclusions. It isn't a question of whether or not you sacrifice knowledge in the name of faith, but what knowledge you choose to sacrifice either by having faith or by not having it.

And, that's not even accounting for the direct affect on your own virtue and that of those around you of endorsing religion or dismantling it.

-- Updated July 30th, 2012, 7:10 pm to add the following --

Too many problems arise when people try to organize certain things. Community evolves into hierarchies, hierarchies evolve into power structures, power structures evolve into elitist tyranny. There are always power struggles within groups, never with individuals. There is no need for spiritual reinforcement if your spirituality is strong and true to your being. Keep it simple.

Oh, I disagree with that for sure. All power struggles between groups are predicated on power struggles between individuals in those groups. And, elitist tyranny is no worse than egalitarian tyranny or the social chaos caused not by a mere lack of public or legal structure, but by literally removing the social structure and its very means of existing. It is easy enough to do away with a handful of eccentric metaphysical beliefs. But, religion is far more than that. In fact, I would almost go so far as to say that this really has nothing to do with whether or not a god exists. Even thelogical disputes apparently over just that very thing such as those between one denomination of Christianity or another or whether Jesus was truly divine or just another prophet are not really about that. Any such dispute that even makes the light of day is more motivated by all that such a doctrine will entail when combined with the religion, ultimately changing the nature and character of the norms embodied within that religion.

This is one reason why it is fruitless to argue over the most absurd myths of some religion when discussing with one of its adherents. If you are not such an adherent of the religion, then you really don't even know what the argument is really about anyway, and so it becomes pretty petty and trivial. If it was just about the actual myth, they would have given up on that a long time ago. And, if their belief was truly that of a child credulously believing juts any little thing, they would be easily persuaded out of it (just like children are). But, that belief is based on a lot more than just the physics surrounding the notion or some other trivial thing. And, their reason for believing, though possibly not entirely rational (hence the need for faith), may nevertheless be quite rational on the whole and even compelling.

“If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go.” ― Alan Wilson Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

These premises seem to me to indeed support your conclusion, but these premises seem more disagreeable than your conclusion! Do you have any evidence or argument to support this? What about Spectrum's point about religious-based attacks? What about the fact that ancient religious texts support things which we now agree are extremely abhorrent, intersubjectively speaking, including slavery, sacrificing children in religious rituals, and the slaughter of unarmed women and children in war?

This is such an old canard. Slavery was brought to an end by believers because of their religious morals. Anyway, one should never say something like "we all now agree". I agree to nothing. To do so only as a means to make some other point is equivocating. Plus, your interpretation of things is one sided at best. That something bad can come out of the social phenomenon of religion is completely meaningless if that is indeed even really an instance of it coming out of religion or even necessarily being wrong or bad in the context it is actually in.

If anything it seems to me organized religion, especially of the more traditional variety as opposed to the reform variety, is the opposite ofa champion of the modern so-called virtues

"Modern virtues" is a contradiction in terms. And, this is really where the rubber is going to hit the road for you in this discussion. Of course, if you are a moral relativist, then that will be your main complaint with all of what I say in this topic.

to which most relatively reasonable people at least pay lip-service to such as not being a violent, selfish, zenophobic, mass-murder-supporting bigot. To reiterate, if religion was -- even just traditionally -- a source of helpful advice, peacefulness and brotherhood,

So, you think that the alternatives especially, say, to the Christians, around 0 AD was peaceful and into all sorts of brotherly love? Puhhhleeeease....

your conclusions that we would want to support it and donate to it -- bring it back to those desired, alleged traditions -- and so forth, but as Spiral Out pointed out, your premises in that regard are false because religion is divisive, both now and in its traditional state. Moving on, even if your premises were true, there would still be the problem with religion pointed out by Grecorivera5150 dealing with religion being doomed simply because it is so clearly wrong like the idea that thunder is caused by Thor's hammer being shaken off shortly after the emergence of a contradictory scientific explanation of how thunder works.

You both completely evaded one of the main points of discussion and you completely render yourselves irrelevant to the question of religion if you think this about where lightning comes from or even really about the metaphysical commitments of a religion.

I see two problems with what you are saying:

1) One can have a secular communion without religion. Consider the many secular charities, secular support groups, secular community centers, secular vigils, secular self-help books, secular book clubs.

What I said was in response to having one's own spirituality in the absense of any organized group. Secular charities, support groups, community centers, etc are all a return to something organized and suffer from all the same ills of organized religion or anything else organized. If the problem is with it being organized, then you are just offering another way to organize like minded individuals into a group with socially enforced norms and so on like the very thing you disparage for that very reason.

2) Again, you are basing your arguments on the premise that the advice and traditions of religion are right or helpful. For instance, you claim the church has some kind of "collective wisdom and encouragement", but I think quite the opposite: one is unwise to follow its overall mean, dangerous, divisive advice.

It's not an assumption. It's an assertion. And you are assuming just the opposite in equal form. Truthfully it is too large a topic to discuss here so if you think religion evil, then fair enough. But, such an assertion really is ridiculous, especially if you are an atheist. To say that there is something intrinsic to religion that would make it evil is tantamount to accepting the veracity of its supernatural origins. As an atheist, you should have to admit that religion is not evil but just a man made social construct that reflects man's own values and norms and is subject to the same corruption any such thing would be, including and especially organized secular alternatives.

I don't believe in a soul. Your argument is to give non-believers a reason to support religion (and eventually forget they do not believe), but don't you think many if not most non-believers do not believe in a soul either?

You almost certainly believe in a soul, you just don't know what it is. It is the spirit you do not believe in -- the immaterial part of a person that survives the death of its body. The soul is just akin to the music out of a radio. One would not deny the existence of the music altogether -- the whole point of contention is over whether the music keeps playing when the radio is turned off.

Again, your false premise is that religion was "pure" in its traditional state or, depending on what you mean by "pure", that its "pure" form is desirable. If anything, reform or 'corrupted' religion is less abhorrent then the pure form, like a half-vampire being less abhorrent than a full-vampire. Indeed, I'd rather have the modern problem of evangelicals following the hateful, divisive teaching of their church/religion by relatively peacefully advocating for denying homosexuals certain civil rights while culturally and verbally being mean to homosexuals than go back to the more religiously pure attitude of stoning homosexuals, adulterers and a myriad of other people to death as instructed by the Jewish/Christian bible.

Then, your false premise is that those people were pure until instructed to do something else by their religion and didn't want to do that, themsleves, and that their religion didn't just reflect their attitudes that came from them. Are you not an atheist? Where do you think it came from? God?

Please. A religion founded by marters idolizing a martyr did not make that up and hand it down to the unsuspecting pure of mind people the sought to convert. Even if you believe that Jesus did not exist, they did and they matyred themselves left and right for that belief. I know its fashionable to villify these people as violent and evil but they aren't. Even to this day priests get defrocked for spilling any blood even in self-defense.

-- Updated July 30th, 2012, 8:04 pm to add the following --

Then the proper course would be to join an activist group supporting your particular cause, this is not spiritually motivated. Spirituality is not rooted in objects, structures, places or the like. It's not about finding battles to fight. It's not about the environment, nationalities, petty differences, mine & yours or who's right or wrong. There is no right or wrong with spirituality. It's just there, as you find it, as you want it to be. Nothing more, nothing less. If you have to scientifically quantify spirituality then you're quite missing the point.

That lacks tradition and selection bias against bad ideas. Activist groups are ephemeral and far more corruptible than something like religion. And, if there is no right or wrong with spirituality, then you have your answer as to why it is not an alternative to religion. It is flaky and misses the whole point. You are talking about the metaphysical beliefs that make you feel good. I am talking about something else entirely. The metaphysical beliefs are what you work for in order to achieve something else on my program. It is just the opposite of "spirituality".

-- Updated July 30th, 2012, 8:27 pm to add the following --

Reason to believe is by the conclusion of the knowledge and wisdom one possesses, now theist (people who believe in afterlife and most importantly divine intervention) acknowledged their reality based upon what they don't understand and on other peoples conclusions, specifically ones created 2000 years ago. From misunderstanding is where they get their Divine interaction possibility, instead of knowing they substitute divine intervention.

Actually, that is specifically falsified by what I originally posted. If you are following my program, you specifically do not believe something by accident or a mistake in your erroneous interpretation of something, be it where lightning comes from or the nature of enigmatic as yet undiscovered facts of science. That is a criticism that people that have an argument like that of Intelligent Design are subject to. I am saying that you condition yourself into having faith because it is virtuous to do so. And, I also, incidentally, acknowledge right up front that such a thing is somewhat paradoxical to one who values intellectual integrity. It would seem that I advocate lying to oneself or willful self-deception. And, indeed, I think I am. But, the moral strength of will it creates in you and those around you is worth it. For one thing, it improves your ability to acquire wisdom far more than it detracts from it in its one or a handful of dubious beliefs you accept on faith.

If you think that this faith extends to all the other precepts of the religion, then that may be where some misunderstanding lies. It doesn't. People routinely convert from one denomination to another, and my arguments surround religion in general. They do not call for some sort of wide sweeping credulity that will have faith in not only God or karma or whatever is the main article of faith but also every little thing the religion asserts. Even within a denomination -- even a very traditional one -- there is a lot left to interpretation and application to ones own particular circumstances. Unfortunately, some of it is still out of the question -- such as the legitimacy of homosexuality -- for a lot of religions. But, that is also where the choice in denomination and the very religion, itself, for that matter, comes in.

You can tell that by how theistic s (ex, christains, jews, muslims) talk when they say stuff like "I have faith in God and the afterlife".

To me, faith means not knowing but betting on it. So when a Christians says that, "to me they are saying i have no idea if the afterlife exist, but ill bet on it!" & the word belief is similar.

Well the word "belief" is really neutral to this question. Knowledge is a justified (among other things) belief. Faith is a kidn of belief that lacks the sort of justification that knowledge has. A philosopher might ask, "Then, why would anyone ever have something like faith?" My whole point is to explain why even a philosopher might want to have faith -- to sacrifice some small article of knowledge for the opportunity to get a lot more knowledge as well as for a number of other benefits besides that of having knowledge. (And, this other knowledge that I speak of is philosophical knowledge not mystical "knowledge" that must be put into quotes -- I am not saying anything like that.)

I don't put my view of reality in jeopardy on some random idea based on misunderstanding, especially something as huge and life changing as in the factor of god being an influence on our actions in the physical world.

Actually, that one belief -- that there is a god -- is not particularly life changing. It says nothing about the character and intent of such a being. It says nothing about your relation to it. Now, that "God exists" in the context of Christendom, does have all sorts of ramifications because it generally entails not only that there is some sort of a thing we call "god" but that this thing has all these attributes and stands in a specific relation to us and so on.

So basically, when peoples faith becomes concrete and has to much pride/tradition/financial gains/comfortably is when the problems of social organized religious beliefs get their problems. And that's with all groups and perspectives, theistic s, atheistic s and deistic s.

And theres a difference between organizational corruption and the individual person corruption.

No doubt. Any such thing is subject to corruption. But, I fail to see that as a real criticism of it. It, then, stands as a ciriticism of all organization and for the sake of it being organized not because of its religious nature. That is a problem to be sure but not really a problem with religion, per se.

-- Updated July 30th, 2012, 8:28 pm to add the following --

“If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go.” ― Alan Wilson Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

I do not cling to belief in God, but rather it clings to me. The strings of compelling moral philosophy bind it to me.

Well, you BELIEVE it clings to you. A compelling moral philosophy which "binds" you may well be your bondage.