Why have an organized religion?
Given the grief organized religion has caused world wide over the millenia, my first inclination is to say “we don’t”. People are quite capable of figuring out right and wrong on their own, though it might be a painful process for both them and those around them if they don’t have a good environment for learning it as they grow up. And in fact, religion or not, the environment kids have growing up is where they learn right and wrong.
Organized religion, for a lot of people, provides a primary venue for social interaction outside the family. Modern society has so many activities for people to do, and transportation (high gas prices or not) is so easy, that I think this is less of a factor than it used to be, but still, in many respects, it’s “one more activity of common interest”.
But it does have real value in its primary function: for all our strengths overall, all too often, humans are weak and forgetful. It is all too easy to bend the rules and let things start sliding down that slippery slope. Organized Religion has value in reminding us what our values are and helping us keep up our resolve to adhere to them. I think that’s why there’s so many different variations on the theme: because people choose different value sets, they need to find an organization that matches them reasonably closely, or else, in effect, they are told “you are a bad person because you don’t adhere to our way”.
One problem is that most of the time this “reminder” function is implemented in the form of an authority figure going “thall shalt”. What is mainly needed is a forum to discuss moral questions that arise periodically where people can weigh the pros and cons and come to a conclusion. Sometimes matters are a little too personal for public consumption, and you want a trusted third party to provide a view from a distance. Dare I say, this is one thing the Catholics almost got right with the confessional.
I shall have to see what I can do to help fulfill this need. While I can’t expect people to consider me a “trusted third party” (you certainly shouldn’t, unless you know me well!), I think a forum for weighing the pros and cons of day-to-day moral questions shouldn’t be too hard, combined with a wiki to capture the conclusions…