I don’t know about you, but I have never come across an organized religion that showed humility about its beliefs.

The points I make below apply in various combinations to all the world’s major religions and most of the minor ones. Some religions are far more guilty than others.

Religions tend to do the following:

• Be absolutely adamant about their point of view
• Believe theirs is the ONLY correct point of view
• Use the word belief but treat it as a fact
• Defend their beliefs as direct revelation, and thus beyond question
• Use writings produced by their own believers, sometimes founders, as evidence
• Represent that something written hundreds or thousands of years ago is still literally relevant to life today
• That such old documents have a bearing on the way modern life should be lived outside of the spiritual realm

Why can’t any of these religions see the stupidity and arrogance of their positions?

The facts being:

• That they are all dealing with written documents prepared after the events in question
• That these documents, being the basis of the faith, are far from independent
• That editing or selection of documents to accept some and reject others has occurred
• That any experience or analysis of ‘channeled’ information (i.e. revelation) is colored by the vocabulary and knowledge of the person acting as the channel, so must be limited in nature compared to what God might really think
• That they concentrate on their points of difference from other religions in a drive for members, rather than seeing the thibgs they have in common with other religions
• Most religions condemn arrogance and yet have the extreme arrogance to believe that their founder could read the mind of or understand the full meaning of a supreme being

These problems with organised religion are not going to go away until we get rid of them and encourage all people to think for themselves rather than being told what to think and do like sheep.