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Well as I said, the word "religion" means different things to different people. Here in the West, the U.S in my case, religion has come to mean the governmental, controlling style.
Whether all religions started out as individual spirituality isn't likely to ever be known. The trouble is, depending on what one person believes and the way he interprets a supposed holy work, it takes little to no effort to abuse it. It depends on the individual, the religious beliefs of that individual, and the willingness of those around him or her to follow. It's frighteningly easy to begin to slip into the mentality of "well, I'm forcing this upon others for their own good," particularly in cases such as the religions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam where the central, over-powering concept is eternal reward or punishment and conforming to the rules is, supposedly, the only way to avoid being punished.




Member since:
2009-04-02
Well, I can agree on some of your arguments. Religion should be not be practiced in a way to control the behaviour of other people. It should be practiced individually to gain moral discpline and do "the right thing". I think all major religions started out that way...
As soon as people use this spiritual practice to control other peoples behaviour, the religion loses his primary intend. In my opinion, this is not a problem with the religon, but with the people who use/abuse their religion for such ends.
PS: I heard from a lot of people that they don't consider Buddhism as a real religion :-) Altough it is very organized in some countries (ex: Tibet) and we do have concepts like heaven, hell, gods and demons. We just consider those as other elements of nature (like humans, animals, the earth, etc...).