Lycidas Janwor
Member
Please. I see where this is heading and we shouldn't even think about going there. Religion (any religion for that matter) may have some sociological, psychological and behavioral aspects but the vast majority of natural tendencies of human social behavior has been monopolized by thousands of different institutional religions throughout the history of mankind. I have the highest respect for everyone's individual beliefs and belief system, but once religion gets organized and hierarchical and starts limiting people's lives beyond objective norms of society in any way, I reserve the right to exercise extreme, well-founded prejudice.
One of my american confreres in the 30's and 40's was somewhat famous for joking that the best business in the world is to start a religion. He wasn't really a hypnotherapist but a hypnotist and I still use some of his routines when I really want to make a deep impression on individuals who think hypnotism - even sheer brainwashing in the very meaning of the word - is a trick, joke or just playing along, instead of a very real medical and physiological phenomenon. Some of the notes he made about church services are still used in clinical hypnotherapy training today. He was called L. Ron Hubbard. He's got plenty of extremely dedicated followers who are just as "wrong" from a christian perspective as christians are from muslim perspective, or muslims are from hindu perspective, or hindus are from buddhist perspective and so on. It took him all of a couple of decades and some basic knowledge of how human subconscious works to accomplish that. And I know exactly how it's done.
So, let's keep religion out of this conversation. It's a powerful tool to control people, for good or evil, but I rather keep it a matter of personal faith - or lack thereof - than praise or demonize any religion only because what its spiritual leaders are using it for.
The important thing in any religion is the freedom of choice. Under the Judeo-Christian ethos, no one is putting a gun to your head and telling you to believe something (well, outside of the Inquisition and whatnot, but that was just outside of the dark ages). Cults are never a good thing either and again, one has to conciously and willingly choose to be a part of a religion.