self-serving make-believe religion'

That definition applies to every religion ever organized, and as well applies to Boy Scouts, the Bush administration, and many economists.

I am reminded of how many of my young peers, when I was growing up, felt a growing dissatisfaction with the doctrines of Christianity as it was taught. It included many myths, formulated in a pre-urban society. It contained many moral guidelines which when tried and tested were found to be too simple-minded for use in the hurly burly of real time. It drew on imaginary constructs which, when tested for applicability, were found wanting. And it involved many people who were quite content to accept doctrinaire manipulation or even worse, to assert manipulative doctrine, without intellectual grace or curiousity.

In all these instances the biggest failure was usefulness in individual discovery and individual living. Not that you can't extract good stuff from Christian teachings, but that you have to bend and twist and stretch so hard to do so.

I could go on at length about the difference between workable principles and unworkable ones, but I won't. Aren't you glad?


A