Religion- What's your take?

What a nice man.  He must have really loved his dinosaurs.  Oh wait...those came before man.  Somehow Adam and Eve managed to escaped them on the seventh day of Earth's existance....

Religion, religion, religion, oh why can't you make up your mind?  Over the course of history, religion has been notorious for shifting with the ebb and flow of unstable human idealism.  If men thought that the ideal piety included plainess, obediency, bible worship, and fear then that's what religious doctrine turned into.  However, when men became more populist in their ideals and demanded freedom and independence from church run governments, religion became much more accessable to regular folks and much more entertaining and passionate during services.  In America, religion began as an unforgiving, dry dogma that saught to instill the fear of an angry god in its listeners.  You had to be chosen by clergy for acceptance into the church, and acceptance was priviledged only to those who had been "saved."  To show that you had been saved, one would send a detailed description of the saving, in written form (and remember most colonists were illiterate), to the head of the church and wait for approval. 

"Our God is an awesome God..."

Well since those God-worried purists, religion has evolved into something more translucent in its meaning and application on the whole, and religious beliefs are unique to each individual.  This is great, in my opinion.  However, religion falls short of being ideal, in my mind, because there is far too much politics raging in religious relms today.  I don't like the idea of a religious authority preaching politics because believers are likely to trust the judgement of the authority rather than research the political issues at hand and form a more educated stand.  Just because a preacher proclaims something and has a plethera of biblical knowledge to back his claims doesn't make him all-knowing and eternally right.  When religion functions in this way it mutes the freedom of believers to think for themselves, a scary thought in itself, and allows people to adopt the falty ideas of a few popular men who afterall are just men and have every opportunity to be wrong.

The Jesus fish stick.  A message from God perhaps?  Or just a fried piece of frozen seafood?

Me personally, I adhere to no organized religion.  For that matter, I have adopted no popular law of morality of even mode of mentality.  I am a Freethinker of the modern day (though I was not born a jew I still would like to adopt the term).  My opinions and standards are always changing to fit a world that never stands still.  I learn and I grow.  Self development is my creed.  Altruism is something I would strive for more arduously if I wasn't born into such a egocentric culture.  However, I don't do anything out of influence from a divine role model (such as Jesus).  Humans are born with reason, but in religion we so often sacrifice reason and investigative behavior for blind acceptance.  Like Thomas Pain I would be so advantageous as to dubb the following as manifestations of an ignorant scared authority-fearing population: literally interpreting the bible, believing in Jesus as a divine man who died for our sins when there is no evidence of that, believing fullheartedly in miracles and using them as evidence that there is a God, disclaiming the findings of science and historical research (that give evidence against bibical stories).  Mary had an affair with a Roman soldier and covered it up by telling her husband that God had impregnated her.  There is more evidence for that than for the fantasy of miraculous conception.  Noah can talk to birds and send one on a lengthy journey to find land and report the finding back to him?  I think not.  However, my parent's african love bird did escape from their house one day and did return after a few hours of being called for. That I do believe.

Well this blog has gotten long enough.  Enough about me.  What's your take?