/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>13335919

The most important question any religious person must ask themselves is "if I woke up tomorrow and somehow knew that God didn't exist, would I regret living my life as a religious man?" The answer should be "no," every aspect of your religiously-dictated beliefs and behaviors should be positive, considered on its own merits. Any policy or action that cannot be justified on its own merits must draw its justification from religion only; i.e. "because this book said so." And that is a dangerous, dangerous fucking road to go down. If that truth is not "self-evident" in some way, than it's hard to call it anything more than a completely arbitrary demand used to justify awful behavior. Religious texts are the victims of a two-thousand year game of Telephone; just because some asshole in eleventy-whatever BC scribbled in his own editorial doesn't mean it's the words of the Prophet or of the God. Blind adherence to dogma is blind adherence to dogma, period - be it religion, political party lines or tribal loyalties, it's the same damn thing. Acting on dogma you cannot or will not question or attempt to understand on a theoretical level reduces you to the level of a fucking cow following the herd based on some simple, animalistic group-think instinct.

So tl;dr there's no fucking reason religion cannot be justified purely on its own merits, without recourse to unprovable deific fiat. But by the same token, there's no fucking excuse for ANYONE to justify their religion based only on unprovable deific fiat. If you can't answer the question at the top of this post, than the fedora tipping lolsoedgy clowns will literally be more correct than you, and that is inexcusable.

Do NOT let that happen.