Religion
A thorny subject if ever there was one but for me religion was originally intended to keep the masses in line and give them a set of morals, laws and rules to live by. The problem is that as history is written by the victors the origins and original messages have been corrupted vastly over time.
If rulers/heads of state weren't keen on specific rules or aspects of their religion, they would create splinter groups adding in and/or removing the bits that didn't fit with the original guidelines.
As Man has become more aware and curious they have turned away from religion and church and its belief system. After all their are now so many groups that it is almost impossible to know if their is any truth behind any religion and it leads me to the one inevitable question.
Is it more likely that Man created God or God created Man ?
For me, it is the former, at least that seems to be the most probable. The stories the bible tells have more holes than a block of Emmenthal cheese, complete gospels have been removed as they did not 'fit' with the beliefs of the day and who knows exactly how much has simply been lost or confused in translation.
It seems to me, that religion as we know it is an outdated concept, if a Messiah was to return in this day and age, he or she would most likely be institutionalised or passed off as a magician.
In saying all that, I do believe in the original concept of creating a set of guidelines to try to live by. I just think that in order to get mankind to follow these initial rules they needed to have something to fear in order to adhere to the 'rules' and so, the fear of God and God's wrath on the sinners were put in place.
A thorny subject if ever there was one but for me religion was originally intended to keep the masses in line and give them a set of morals, laws and rules to live by. The problem is that as history is written by the victors the origins and original messages have been corrupted vastly over time.
If rulers/heads of state weren't keen on specific rules or aspects of their religion, they would create splinter groups adding in and/or removing the bits that didn't fit with the original guidelines.
As Man has become more aware and curious they have turned away from religion and church and its belief system. After all their are now so many groups that it is almost impossible to know if their is any truth behind any religion and it leads me to the one inevitable question.
Is it more likely that Man created God or God created Man ?
For me, it is the former, at least that seems to be the most probable. The stories the bible tells have more holes than a block of Emmenthal cheese, complete gospels have been removed as they did not 'fit' with the beliefs of the day and who knows exactly how much has simply been lost or confused in translation.
It seems to me, that religion as we know it is an outdated concept, if a Messiah was to return in this day and age, he or she would most likely be institutionalised or passed off as a magician.
In saying all that, I do believe in the original concept of creating a set of guidelines to try to live by. I just think that in order to get mankind to follow these initial rules they needed to have something to fear in order to adhere to the 'rules' and so, the fear of God and God's wrath on the sinners were put in place.