Mass Insanity- Religion

Do you believe in God? Do you pray to God? Do you believe that God is watching over you?
Whether you answered yes or no to these questions, you are still affected by religion every day. As the song “Freewill” from Rush says, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”
I can easily understand someone being frightened of aligning themselves with any particular religion. A large percentage of the world’s problems are the result of needless divisiveness caused by religion. If you want to read an excellent analysis of just how deeply the world has been affected by religion, try Sam Harris’ book, The End of Faith. It truly opened my eyes when I read it, about five years ago.
I am currently a member of the Catholic Church, and I also choose to sing in the choir, which has at most seven members and some Sundays features just two or three singers and an organist. But I certainly do not agree with some of the Church’s viewpoints and I think there handling of the abuse crisis which has plagued the Church for more than a decade now is shameful and hypocritical. In my opinion it is well past the time to dismantle the old boy and all boy network and choose a female Pope. No woman would ever countenance what has been allowed to happen inside the churches of the world.
I continue to attend Roman Catholic Church because the solemn, communal feeling I get at Mass always makes me feel better and being in the choir further enhances that feeling. My relationship with God is personal, so no one has the right to tell me how to worship, just as I have no right to tell anyone else how to do so.
But the central question that everyone dances around is, why? Why does all of this interfaith hatred and resentment have to exist? Examine it in a vacuum for a second.
For any religion to have any measure of validity it has to preach acceptance and tolerance of all people, whether they are religious or atheist. While many religions preach this in theory, in practice this is far from what we have. Far too many of the world’s prejudices are drawn along religious lines and far too many people die as a result.
One of the more stunning and hideous examples happened just the other day, when two young people were stoned to death by the Taliban because they tried to elope. That isn’t religion, that isn’t culture, that is barbarism, pure and simple, and anyone who practices it cannot say they represent any sort of religious principle at all. That type of behavior is driven by hatred and mass insanity and its presence is a blight upon the entire world, for which we are all responsible.
That does not mean we should carry guilt in our consciousness because of the acts of madmen. What is does require is self vigilance. If we are not examples of tolerance and acceptance in our daily lives, then we feed the fires of hatred that allow heinous acts like stoning to happen. All each person can do is be the best person that they can, and that requires the aforementioned vigilance on a daily basis. If enough people embrace daily growth and become beacons of tolerance and acceptance, then the effects of hatred would be greatly reduced and the world would be a far more nurturing place.