Saturday, March 14, 2009

No Need for Bibles

Christians really only half-heartedly gesture toward the Bible as the foundation for their beliefs.

There are countless beliefs, practices, and ceremonies that have nothing to do with the Bible. From dates of religious holidays to making the sign of the cross, religion is about MAN's ideas and traditions. The older, the better. For some reason, antiquity has great merit to modern man.

When people say "ancient manuscript" or "ancient remedies" it is often to imply that they are somehow better, because they are old. As if ancient man was so much wiser than modern man.

That is sad, because the very opposite is true. Next time someone uses the term "ancient" make a mental effort to realize that "inferior" could be used in its place.

Back to the main subject of this post. Religion gains it's strength and reputability mostly on the basis of how many other people believe it. It doesn't even matter what the religion professes, if everyone around you claims to believe it's true, you automatically have the tendency to go along with them.

Imagine for a second that everyone around you had no belief in the Bible, and treated it as nothing more than mythology. Nobody went to church, or said prayers, or celebrated the religious holidays, except for you.

That fact alone would cause you to seriously reconsider your religious convictions, wouldn't it? If everyone looked at you like you were crazy for believing the Bible, I guarantee your belief system wouldn't last long.

So my point is that religious faith has nothing to do with the Bible, or any spiritual "truths" or divine inspiration. It has solely to do with the sheer volume of people who believe.

And THAT's why religions WANT you to believe. That's why they proselytize belief; why belief is SO important. The MORE who belief, the stronger everyone's belief becomes.

A shared belief acts as validation where no real validation can be found.