Then why?

In light of the frustration I communicated in my last post what is it that keeps me, in one way or another, on the fringes of the religious realm?

Well, here's the thing:
Religions are human productions. Really, they are. People made them. Not deliberately, but people living life at certain times spread out all over the world and all throughout history contributed to the development of the religions.

It wasn't like an assembly line at the religion manufacturing plant where this person added this piece and that person added that piece and it all fit together to become one fancy final product.

It was more like how people make babies. Once upon a time people's questions about life coupled with the reality of their lives and a baby was conceived. This happened wherever people clustered together. Some of the baby's grew up to be strong and active in the world. Others grew up and kind of kept to themselves. Many of them had babies of their own. And several of them, to this day, have dissociative identity disorder.

What I'm interested in is how we, as parents, respond to our offspring. And, even if we don't have our own, how we respond to the presence (and actions) of other people's offspring.

I'm not interested in discussing whether or not such and such a religion should exist, or whether religion in general should be discontinued. In my opinion it's kind of too late for those questions. Religion is too much a part of the family, too much a part of the human story, to be rid of it. Not without a big mess.

Maybe it will come to that. Things are already a mess and maybe before we can clean things up we'll need to make a bigger mess. But an honest appraisal of what the world would be like -- for so many individuals, nations, and cultures -- if the rug of religion was pulled out from under them leads me to conclude that I am not prepared to be the one to tug.

I think we have a lot more to discuss before we go down that road. And if we all open ourselves up to discussion then maybe we won't have to.