Fallacy against Organized Religion

Jesus' Church (Church of Grace), Cieszyn (Poland) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Fallacy against Organized Religion

In following with the previous fallacy, another fallacy of human thought arises within people. Because many religions of the world have sects and divisions among them such as the many denominations of the Christian faith and the many divisions of the Islamic faith, we tend discard the religion entirely because of the religious tenants of a single division.

Within Christianity there are far too many denominations and sects to be listed here and is outside the scope of this dissertation. However to site a point, Mormonism espouses itself as a Christian religion though the doctrines of that faith are considered heresy by more orthodox denominations.

When judging the validity of any religion, say Christianity, a reasonable judge must look beyond the label that the denomination has given itself and search out the doctrinal principles and the examine the actions of its members that are considered praiseworthy by its leaders.

If leaders of a sect consider homosexual with small children, such as one small sect of the Islamic faith, as being praiseworthy, this must be weighed against the whole teaching of the entire religion. Islam is not the only religion that has been guilty of such actions. The so called Christian sect named the “Branch Davidian” once believed in the leader’s right to have sexual relations with any female within his sect. Clearly this was a violation of the principles of all the rest of Christianity that taught such actions as adultery.

Ask yourselves the question, “What is wrong with organized religion?” or even its reversal, “What is good with unorganized religion?” Perhaps this definition is too obscure and the consensus is the amount of power a well structured religious denomination brings.

Inarguably, among men, power corrupts but then that corruption is made manifest by the actions of men and not the tenant of a religion. Perhaps it is too much for a person to believe that a church or religion should wield power of any society but this like given an employee in a company great responsibility for a job without giving them to power to effect changes in the efficiency of that job. It is illogical to suggest that a true religious principle should not also have the right to be acted upon.

  For instance, for the sake of argument, lets say that God will judge you when you die. Let us also say that baptism (immersion in the Greek) was a requirement set forth by God and failure to observe such commandment would mean exclusion from salvation (Mark 16:16). If these principles were the measure of salvation and the majority of the world did not comply, do I, who knows the truth, not have a moral obligation before all of humanity teach that with authority? Does not my moral obligation also equate to authority in what I practice? If we deny that moral obligation is directly related to authority and power then we discard all governmental powers and authority as well and this leads us into obsurdity.