Inventing Religion

 THERE ARE MORE than thirteen hundred and fifty religious sects in the United States. slightly more than half are various Christian denominations, and the rest are mostly outposts of major religions which are more prominent in other parts of thee world, such as Islam and Hinduism. Many are made in America one hit wonders, cute little cults consisting of a few dozen or so members, doing their own thing. World wide, there are thousands of religions, some highly organized, some not so much, many confined to a single locality far from the beaten trail and madding crowd. From all this we learn two things. Religious diversity is alive and well in America, as it has always been intended to be, and the Christian faith is fragmented into fractions of its former self, as it was never intended to be, but became, early and often. We also learn that religion is a highly individual affair, or as Goethe put it best, as Goethe always seems to put things best: "When I realized that everyone invents his own religion, I decided to invent mine". Tragically, much harm has been and continues to be done to the world by the failure of billions to understand this. People, the more devoted they become to their religion of choice, get the crazy idea that there is only one true religion, which just happens to be theirs, rather than billions. Those who get this crazy idea are, invariably the one obsessed with religion, of whom their are countless millions. There are reasons for this, most prominently the human mind, its nature, its inability or refusal to see beyond the end of its own nose. There are also societal benefits to religious tunnel vision.  The main benefits of a single, absolutely completely inarguable true religion for all of society in which everyone belongs is a passive, controllable populace amenable to authoritarian rule, which is the most efficient form, in which everybody, from a religious standpoint, is always right, all the time. Organizational efficiency. Conflict with other systems of thought, religious and otherwise, persecution of non conformers, and cultural stagnation and its resulting harm in retarding cultural evolution far outweigh any and all benefits of absolute uniform religious conformity. Every human has his or her own religion. the sooner we all accept that, the better. Merely interviewing people concerning their religious beliefs clearly confirms this. We are intelligent, creative imaginative, creative beings, not dumb animals requiring the close supervision of uniform authoritarian cultural conformity. Since all religions are invented by people, let all people invent their own religions. After all, one is about as good as another.