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Well, this taking my posts on another subject and putting them in my journal thing seems to work pretty well so here's my view on why so many people dislike whatever religion~



A lot of people hate religion because the number of people who use it as an excuse to treat people like dirt far outnumber the people who can be recognized as a member of any particular religion but don't use it like that (much like how we know that only a few Muslims are terrorists but have probably only met or heard about around six 'normal' Muslims while we've heard about dozens or maybe hundreds of terrorists.

The basic "be good to each other" aspect of religions is certainly worthwile and admirable but the "people who see the world differently than me are inferior and dirty" aspect almost completely negates the former aspect. It's obvious that the creators of most religions never intended it for that use but based on interaction with people who declare themselves as a Christian it appears that there are several dozen people who ascribe to the nasty use of the beliefs for every one person who aims for the clearly 'good' use.


In much the same way that racism is based only on what you've seen a handful of people of a particular group do the sterotypical actions the rest of us see enough Christians being complete assholes. The real problem is that, not only do all of those assholes get together to try and make everyone do things their way but that they happen to be the people who most often take up positions as leaders of your church.
It makes sense though, those people tend to have radically strong feelings on a large number of topics so they would obviously be the ones who try to climb up higher in the hierarchy.

Anyway, the rest of you need to question your leaders. All too often do you let them onvince you that the Bible says something with verses that are taken completely out of context or were written with words that used to have different meanings. Stop letting them tell you that you're a bad Christian if you don't believe this or that without at least making sure your book actually says you need to believe it.
I know we Americans aren't all that great at checking things ourselves and studying the background information on a topic when somebody else has already told us what they think about this or that topic but if want people to stop hating you you need to stop letting the people in charge convince you that their agendas are your faith.