It’s easy to see that whoever conceived certain religions was clearly thinking logically, unlike the followers of these religions.  There are many aspects of many religions designed solely to prevent members of these religions converting to non-believers. Sometimes these measures are blatantly obvious, sometimes you have to apply a bot more logic.

I’m going to use two examples to demonstrate my point.  Firstly, Christianity.  The fundamental selling point of Christianity is that when you die you can either to to heaven or hell.  Heaven is a wonderful place, hell is a terrible place where you will be tortured.  Forever.  This is a pretty compelling sales pitch.  To get to heaven you must do two things. Firstly, die.  Secondly, follow the teachings of the bible, including the 10 commandments.  We all think we know the 10 commandments, but have you ever really thought about their purpose?  I’m guessing you’re currently muttering something about keeping order or instilling moral values or something, right?  If that’s the case, look again, more closely this time.  For the purpose of this little examination, we’ll have a look at the Anglican 10 commandments, just to keep it simple.  That gives us the following:

I am the Lord thy God.

  1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
  2. Thou shalt not make for thyself an idol.
  3. Thou shalt not make wrongful use of the name of thy God.
  4. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.
  5. Honor thy Father and Mother.
  6. Thou shalt not murder.
  7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
  8. Thou shalt not steal.
  9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
  10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house.  Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.

So there you have it, the 10 most important rules to follow in life.  I can’t be the only one who’s noticed that 40% of those rules are to do with making sure you don’t question the religion.  Look at them.  Only the last six have anything to do with morals, order, law etc.  So to be clear, it is as important to have no other Gods as it is not to murder.  It seems obvious that whoever wrote these commandments, they had self-preservation of the religion close to their heart.

And it’s not just Christianity.  Fairly recently there were riots all around the world when a Danish newspaper published derogatory cartoons of the Islam Prophet Muhammad.  This goes against one of the most important rules of Islam, not to provide a visual representation of the Prophet Muhammad.  You have to question why a religion would prevent it’s followers from visually representing one of the most prominent characters.  The reason, logically, seems clear.  This”person” didn’t exist and if visual representations were allowed, they may differ substantially enough so as to cast doubt on the reliability of the material that talks about this person.

This is a reoccurring theme throughout religion.  It’s like Fight Club.  The first rule of religion, is don’t talk about fight club to make sure no one questions and everyone falls in line.