"scams. Based on fear, ignorance and ego."

That's how I feel about most government propaganda nowadays, kendall! ;-D And much of what the news media tells me. And religions too when they are mishandled....but not when they are not. And most commercial advertising, for sure.

You see, governments try to sell you a policy that may very well hurt your nation...for the gain of a few rich people at the top.

Businesses try to sell you a product you may very well not need...for the gain of a few rich people at the top.

The news media, owned by a few rich people, tell you the propaganda that their rich owners want you to hear, so as to form public opinion as they would like it to be.

Those are scams too.

If a religion tries to sell you a false or frightening idea in order to control you for the gain of that religious hierarchy...or for the gain of a few leaders...that's a scam.

And I avoided religions for many years simply on that basis. But I knew almost nothing about them at the time. My prejudice (having grown up as an atheist) was based on a mere sliver of knowledge and supposition about religion, not on actual experience around religions.

If, however, a religion offers you a way of getting together with other people you really like and with whom you share common values...if it offers you a way to build a better community and help the poor, for example...if it helps you to look deeper into ideas and philosophical viewpoints that you find inspiring, and finding greater inner peace...if it motivates you to be a better person and to treat other people in a kinder way...that's NOT a scam.

Having discovered a number of religious groups over the years who did all of the above (and they were not all in the same religions, and some were inclusive of all major religions or were non-denominational)...I know that religion is not necessarily a scam.

It's just a scam when it's used in a hypocritical and fraudulent way.

To be cynical about ALL religion on principle is about as perceptive as thinking that "all women are stupid" or "all men are brutes" or "all Irish are drunkards" or "all Americans are fat, racist, fundamentalist slobs". A prejudice like that can't be based on a whole lot of real experience with a variety of different examples or cases of the subject at hand. It's a position of blind prejudice, not actual knowledge.

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Don - I pretty much agree with everything you said in your last post. As you said, "religion should be a matter of choice, not of coercion. And the carrot and stick is counterproductive in that context"

Absolutely! Dead right. Anything I have ever had to do with religion was definitely a matter of my own free choice as a freethinking adult. I don't go near any outfit that tries to coerce me.

Since my parents made no effort to enroll me in any religion whatsoever, being atheists, I can assure you that I've been under no coercion at any time to join a religion. And if people are so foolish as to threaten me now with "hell" if I don't take up their specific beliefs, I avoid them. I don't judge them. I just avoid them.