What utter nonsense, hearing about this strange cults bizarre rituals and mumbo jumbo only serves to reaffirm my belief as a Snake Handler, the one true faith
Seriously though when will people wake up to the fact that the corporate world of religion = money, sex, control, influence, suffering, death, perversion, fraud and treachery. Causing more misery than good over the centuries.
Wishing imaginary friends were real doesn’t make it so, praying to “god” your offer on a house gets accepted or your son does well at his interview whilst hundreds of thousands of children are dying agonising deaths from bone cancer or any number of horrifying diseases or suffering from neglect or being raped by a football coach. If I’m wrong and there is a god, he’s either totally impotent and has no power to stop this or he’s an evil bastard.
I’m drunk so I apologise in advance for any offence caused, I think every contributor to this depressing but essential thread wants the same outcome, so let’s agree on that.
While I agree with your general premise, as with all things, there is, imho, a slight nuance.
I do believe that the power of positive thought helps determine your fate in life. I've experienced this in real life.
I'm in no way a religious person. I have my own faith but I have a very deep mistrust of organized religion, for the very reasons you mention here. Reasons most of us all recognize. My faith is that I do believe in the golden rule and that you get what you give out mostly. A type of karma I guess.
I had my own experience with extreme child abuse from a very early age. As far as I'm aware it was not sexual in nature and in no way am I claiming that I have gone through the absolute evil and disgusting experiences that these poor CSA victims have.
But I was shaped and my early experiences in life were very deeply affected by what was done to me by the people I trusted as a very small child. So much so that I was in a deep depression most of my life, never trusting anyone, expecting the worst out of life.
Then I read something profound that hit home with me; that the feelings I had were only the result of the predominant thoughts in my head. There is the biological side to this as there is brain chemistry involved but this realization changed my life because I realized that I was responsible for my own feelings. No outside force was. Obviously, again, this depends on your age and circumstances; but as a grown male adult, I had control of my own circumstances.
So I do believe those that pray, although I'm not one, are tapping into the power of positive thinking. The problem is that people corrupt that through organized religion. Man's existence throughout time has always been open to the corruption of other people.
And before I get the 'Polly Anna' bs comments, I had the same thoughts. There is a method called 'The Secret'; where they say if you envision you will get a check in the mail for 1,000 pounds eventually you will. I call that BS as well.
I do truly believe though that with the combination of positive thinking and corresponding real actions taken to attain your intended goal, that you can affect your future. Just as you can wallow in your own misery and create a very real horrible reality. I'm living proof of this, after decades of debilitating depression, I've broken that cycle.
The horrible reality for many is that the abuse they have experienced was so scarring and traumatic that getting out of that hole takes a monumental effort. My heart goes out to all those people and, like all of you, I will be very happy when the evil scumbags that enabled and inflicted this abuse on them are brought to justice.