If you have the awareness level of a snail, and your thinking is mired in shame and guilt (with perhaps a twist of drug abuse or suicidal thinking), then subscribing to a religion can help you climb to a higher level of awareness. Your mindset, however, still remains incredibly dysfunctional; you’ve merely swapped one form of erroneous thinking for another.
For reasonably intelligent people who aren’t suffering from major issues with low self-esteem, religion is ridiculously consciousness-lowering. While some religious beliefs can be empowering, on the whole the decision to formally participate in a religion will merely burden your mind with a hefty load of false notions.
When you subscribe to a religion, you substitute nebulous group-think for focused, independent thought. Instead of learning to discern truth on your own, you’re told what to believe. This doesn’t accelerate your spiritual growth; on the contrary it puts the brakes on your continued conscious development. Religion is the off-switch of the human mind.
Leave the mythology behind, and learn to think for yourself. Your intellect is a better instrument of spiritual growth than any religious teachings...Pull your head out of your rear, and look around with your own two eyes. If you need something to worship, then feel grateful for your own conscious mind. Pull it out of the cobwebs, and boot it up.
Besides… if some popular religious version of God does exist, there’s a good chance he’s a complete and total idiot. He made us in his image, right? So perhaps we shouldn’t be so quick to worship an entity so lacking in intelligence. We’re better off on our own.
Answers & Comments
Verified answer
What you call"self esteem" (that comfort level you have in your own understanding) is called pride, and it usually precedes a fall. The inherent depravity of man is easily seen, but intellectually is abhorrent. Any amount of worship, formal or otherwise is a waste of time from such a perspective.
It was Lucifer's pride that got him the boot. Trying to compete with God, much less calling Him an idiot, is simply asking for it.
But hey, you're smarter than all those who found a reason to believe, right?
I wonder what will you say when you meet Him?
He shall smite thee in the Lake of Fire, and it's forever if you don't call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Revelation 20:14-15
NIV
14 Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. 15 Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.
Smiting happens at the bar of judgment.