Is organized religion just a business of snake oil salesmen?

Any religion, nonreligious ideology or school of thought, for that matter, can be treated like snake oil and "sold" to others and can be used in abusive, or just plain dumb, power struggles. Stuff like that is even behind our national and global economic crisis, in fact (look into the ideational forces driving the current national and global economic crises; there's a school of thought behind it that ruled the day and still has its hands in numerous cookie jars). Stuff like this happens because most people don't understand the different natures of power or the concepts behind it. They don't understand the variety and they can't better differentiate. And they don't understand imagination's key role in...just about everything!



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And it's not just power they don't have a better grasp of, it's all the different forms love and reciprocity.



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As for religion...



Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is about correct beliefs, basically. In our part of the world, organized religion is almost all monotheistic and so it tells you what you must believe, or else. Luckily we don't have to belong to any particular religion or its denominations in my country (the U.S.), but you if you don't believe whatever, you still can get excommunicated and even ostracized by friends and family who are still in the religion. Not that any religion can't be guilty of it, they can be, but monotheism tends to get into identity clash after identity clash, and if it isn't engaging in actual religious wars, then enough people in monotheism are always engaged in "culture" wars...which are really religious wars too.



Many dogmatic religions originally had more emphasis on correct behaviors but lost a lot of that focus over time. Some within various monotheisms and their denominations are calling to bring a greater emphasis on correct behaviors or orthopraxic elements (e.g. "Love thy neighbor," a form of reciprocal ethics).



Orthopraxy. Orthopraxy is about correct practices. Orthopraxic religions are focused on correct practices/behaviors, including but not limited to hospitality, equality, ritual, reciprocal ethics, logic, and much more. Some orthopraxies may have some dogma (what you have to believe or else). Other orthopraxies (ADF Druidry, for example) may only have tenets (what is held to be true but may subject to tweaking and updating because other arts and disciplines, like the sciences, inform orthopraxic religions).



When I say that something does not equal (≠) the other it doesn't mean that things can't coexist but that one doesn't, as an axiom, equal or cause the other. When many answer polls like this one, it's obvious that perhaps most are erroneously **equating** religion with religionism (the idea that religion is sufficient as major lens with with to view and interpret all) or that they're **equating** dogma with religion.



Religion ≠ Religionism

Religion ≠ Dogma



Now, about false dilemmas. When people equate like Religion = Dogma, they often fall into certain false dilemma traps. A false dilemma is when you take all of reality, all possible options, and often people, and divide them into two supposedly opposite choices when there are many choices and these choices often are not opposites. Here are two common false dilemmas raging today. I'll start with the oldest first.



The Forces of Good™ vs. The Forces of Evil™ (Monotheism)

Rationalism vs. Religion (The Rationalists new and improved false dilemma, heh)



So it's not just religious folk that do the divisive 'us vs. them' crap by blaming religion, the "wrong" religion or lack of religion for all that's wrong with the world. The new dualism (Rationalism vs. Religion) is not much of an improvement and it's still a false dilemma...which is a logic error and that makes it...irrational.



Most of the choices in this poll here divisively fall in line with one or more of the above false dilemmas. Ugh. We have other choices. These other choices of religion or spirituality are not all opposites (like good and evil), and comparing them is often like comparing apples to oranges. Below is a partial list but it covers a lot of territory, so here it goes.



Atheism – there are no Gods

Agnosticism -- there may be Gods but I don't care to define them, they are ineffable

Pantheism -- the physical world is divine

Panentheism -- the Gods are everywhere

Polytheism -- there is more than one God

Animism -- everything is alive

Monism -- everything that exists is one being

Monotheism – there is the one and only true God

Nontheism -- the recognition that there are gods but the concept that they are not the best focus (various right actions and right thinking that translate into higher levels of reciprocity and love in mankind may often be thought as the better focus in nontheistic religions)

... and yet other religions or paths ...



Regardless of whether you choose to have religion, regardless of whether you choose to get into religionism, and regardless of whether you're and atheist, agnostic or some form of 'spiritual but not religious' path, be it organized or not -- we humans are never going to hammer out a lot of our prevalent problems if we don't learn about the natures of power, imagination, love, reciprocity, logic and so on.



We have to solve problems at the root level or they just keep on coming back dressed up a bit differently. Really.