Let me make it absolutely clear that I was not trying to fling aspersions about religous thought or individual convictions of a religous nature.

There is a place to take things on faith and a place where you may not surrender your sovereign freedom to use your own integrity to see your own truth.

The classof organizing acts I was referring to are those which establish some humans as arbiters of doctrine and spiritual principle which judgements are then passed on to others as convictions. Especially so at the poinbt where those convictions are THEN used to advise adherents where they should place their money, energy, or actions in the world.

Thinking "for" others, meaning insisting on doing their thinking for them as distinguished from offering your best thoughts to others for their consideration, is a serious ethical compromise, especially if it leads others into acts of infamy such as crusades, carbombings, or other forms of insanity.

It is easy to assert that that was then, and this is now.

The seeds of the Crusades are still being acted out by the same kind of oppressive nut cases who drive the fundanetalist Islamic armies. The fertile ground is those people who not only want to take some things on faith, in a spiritual sense, but want to extend that idea to giving up their own thinking and standards of right action to others' determination.

A