I recently attended a christening at a local church.
Things I noted were that religion is a very good form of control, it uses some clever psychological tricks to reinforce its ideals such as chanting and mob vilification. It is a commonly understood fact that people when acting as a group rather than as free thinking individuals are capable of vilifying something that is different from themselves for the simple reason that its not them. Another time when this psychological trick was used was by Adolf Hitler when he managed to turn a country against a race via clever propaganda and the mob reflex of human beings.
By acting as a mob in this way a persons individuality is damaged, keep it up for long enough and it is destroyed, when a persons individuality is destroyed they then become automatons, very susceptible to suggestion almost regardless of the nonsense of the suggestion.
I used to attend church as a child however I was lucky enough to have very intelligent and sensible parents that neither wanted to push me away from religion or enforce their own doctrine on me. They wanted me to experience religion and for me to make up my own mind, this is all that can be done if a child is to retain their individuality and it encouraged independent thought and reinforced the belief that I should question everything. I don't think I was liked in church for the fact that I would ask questions and follow them through to their logical conclusion without prejudice, malice or preconceptions. I will always remember one particular discrepancy in the logic of the bible “if god forgives all sins then why does hell exist...it's for people that have committed sins...which are presumably forgiven so they no longer have sin...they will always have sin...so what does it mean to be forgiven...it means your sin is removed...so god forgives all sin and it is removed, so why does hell exist...it doesn't work like that...so god doesn't forgive all sin?...yes he does...so hell is empty...no hell keeps all sinners e.t.c. Keep following these arguments through to their conclusion again without emotion and you come to a few plausible conclusions 1. that religion is full of discrepancies, flaws and illogical leaps that are nonsensical. 2. you need to have a leap of faith!
A leap of faith, this is religious parlance for ignoring what you know to be true in favour of mob rules.
A nice quote in Dracula is something like "faith means convincing yourself of something you know not to be true actually is." - I'll try and find the actual quote later
It is this “leap of faith” idea that is very clever when it comes to control, as explained before when under the control of mob mentality you freely adhere to the reality that is put before you and the more ridiculous it becomes the more likely you are to reject it, but not if you are made to bring yourself into question which is where the “leap of faith” comes into its own. People already indoctrinated into religion will shun those that question things rather than accept what they are told at face value, which makes those people doing the questioning into the vilified culture which they don't want to be so weak of will take a “leap of faith” and those that don't serve to reinforce the beliefs of the rest of the mob.
Religion is a remarkable control mechanism that works best on the masses which is exactly what it was invented for.
The problem occurs when the original people who developed the control are no longer around and the followers are left to try and make sense of things. Without someone to give direction the discrepancies are fudged until a new leader takes over. This can and has caused factions to form while the mob lurch around like a hydra with a head missing, the scary thing is that there is no control over the leaders that gain control and hence fanaticism is allowed to take hold.
This could all be remedied if everyone simply retained their own individuality. As I said before I judge these things without emotion, I truly have no feeling good or bad towards religion. In certain circumstances it is a good thing it provides support groups and if everyone made a promise to be nice to one another the world would be a better place but sadly no such religion exists (although Buddhism comes pretty close).
