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Living in fear is a wretched state though, yet many many religious doctrines are based in fear, condemnation, hate, for anyone outside of their church or religion. If you believe that victims of suicide are consigned to hellfire for all eternity, you might as well go to their funerals and preach to all of the friends and family who loved them that their loved one will suffer eternally from now on. Victims of rape, violence, neglect, abuse, poverty, other types of trauma, people with serious mental disorders, or anyone who wasn't lucky enough to survive their first suicide attempts (i've survived at least 4 myself), don't get any more chances and deserve to suffer, because God is always just and fair. To many of us that have decided to reject religion, such a seemingly at-odds message (God is just and fair, but life is unfair, and some people just don't get second chances) is despicable and insane. It's people trying to assuage their own fear of the unknown, and guilt for their wrongdoings, by subscribing to a cosmology that of course they will be forgiven for their crimes and attain everlasting happiness and utopia, but everyone else is damned. A number of religions, and sects within religions, maintain exclusivity for their beliefs about who gets into heaven and who doesn't, yet adherents always believe there can be no doubt that they themselves are correct and everybody else is wrong. I choose to believe that if God exists, He/She/They are at least as just and fair, compassionate and loving and forgiving, as the best human has ever been. If we devote ourselves to good deeds and works, not judging and condemning our fellow man, nor resting on our laurels and often arbitrary convictions, then we are more likely to find favor from any judge weighing the value of our lives and deeds, and the trajectory of our hearts. |
This is such an extreme and ignorant simplification. You speak as if religious doctrines have been developed by shoe shop owners feeling guilty for selling expensive stuff to poor women.