Nothing more

I fear that religion is nothing more than superstition. That's difficult to admit, given the resources and time I have devoted to Christianity. However, it is a conclusion to which I am driven when I note how Christian people think and act. Rites of the church, like infant baptism, are treated like magical actions whose very performance (opera ad operata) produce actual benefits in the person who undergoes them. Rites have become invested with mysterious power to effect salvation.

Superstition is the false attribution of causality. It seems to me that's what religion--or at least church--is all about. As we pastors 'dance between the altar and the mercy seat', are we not in reality continuing to employ smoke and mirrors to deceive people about the nature of things, i.e., the way things really are, and the way things really happen.

God, the superhuman, personal deity made in our image, does not exist. Shouldn't we be honest and let people know Christianity is a manufactured deception that has been kept alive for centuries, ever since the first believers feigned knowledge of a resurrection.

Faith is a euphemism for prejudice and religion is a euphemism for superstition. --Paul Keller