The Perversion of Religion

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I'm not a tremendously religious person. I don't attend religious services, I don't say prayers before bedtime (or much of any other time), I don't read a section of my holy book on a regular schedule... you get the picture. The closest I'd come to claiming a personal faith is to call myself a sort of armchair Daoist.

And yet I find myself deeply offended by those who profane their own professed faith... the Jim Bakkers, Osama Bin Ladens, Paul Shanleys of the world. They seem like a special category of scum in the swirling pool of humanity. I may question the existence of a sentient "God," but I cannot abide someone who claims to follow him and then violates the very tenets of the faith they claim to hold dear.

To me the very existence of religious thought and faith represents something incredibly pure in human imagination. The fact that we think of Gods and look to them for guidance represents a fundamental admission of our imperfections. The fact that we imagine beings somehow more pure and wonderful than ourselves shows our ability to imagine and strive towards higher ide...

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