Reply #57: it's disturbing to see how susceptible people are to charismatic influences.

[shireen]

It is (properly, historically, and traditionally) the realm of religion (or spirituality to seek) to create a better society through improving individual human beings.

If i understand your correctly ... you're referring to the idealistic pure-goodness flavor of religion and spirituality, the ultimate saintly existence that people likes to think they're practicing, except they're seriously deluded. :P


You can take a person out of religion, but taking the religion out of the person is a more difficult task

So true. It's a profound life experience that can exert a powerful and diverse range of outcomes. I'm still traumatized from being forced to attend church and sunday school, and get very uncomfortable in churches. But my siblings, who went to the same church and sunday school, essentially exposed to the same religious influences, are quite comfortable with church and religious holidays like Christmas. I don't know why I developed such a strong aversion towards organized religion, and they did not.


People have actually based their personal spiritual beliefs on things like the Star Trek TV series, or on certain sci-fi novels. Much of the Obama following has had disturbingly cult-like religious overtones.

I've seen "cultish" behaviour in other campaigns too. In 2004, campaigning for Wes Clark, I interacted online with some Clark supporters. A few individuals displayed some rather extreme blind adoration towards him that was a bit creepy.


The complex psychology of religion is extremely hard to understand .. as i indicated earlier, banging my head against a brick wall, over and over, hurts less than thinking about religion! :banghead: OWWW!!