I don't trust organized religion. I don't know what makes me so untrusting of it, so here is an exploratory essay.
First of all, let me say that organized religion makes a lot of people happy. Many people depend on a healthy dose of religion every day in order to survive and thrive, and many of those people are healthy, happy and nice. For a lot of people, organized religion provides meaning in a meaningless life; it fills the gaping void in their souls and it gives them purpose and direction.
But not me.
To me, organized religion is a terrifying and mindless vacuum, which sucks people in and churns out thoughtless clones, people who simply accept what they are told and never ask questions. More to the point, most of the people that organized religion churns out seem to be unable to accept questioning about their faith: it usually degenerates from simple questioning to name-calling and threatening in a matter of minutes.
The first problem I have with religion in general is that it tends to focus large groups of people on the words of one man: a preacher, pastor, imam, or pope. Religion is not about listening to what one mortal man says to you: religion is about trying to discover and talk to God. Religion is about finding a meaning in your life, a reason to live, something to believe in. Conventional Christian worship involves a mass of believers sitting in a church, listening to one man interpret the bible for them. How many Christians ask serious questions about their faith? How many Christians have ever stopped and thought, really thought, about what Jesus actually said? Listening to and trying to understand God is the point of religion; listening to or trying to understand one man is not the point of religion. Giving one person, any one person, the power to tell you what you should believe is an enormous mistake. Church leaders have enormous power, and anyone with power is not to be trusted.
The second problem I have with religion is that it seems to be largely lip service. For example, I have met a lot of purported Christians in my day, and while there are a large number who are genuinely kind people, there are an equally large number who are paranoid, hateful, despicable abominations of human beings. I know not to fight fire with fire, but a part of me deep down inside is deeply, fiercely angry with these people. How dare they claim to be followers of a loving God when all they do is hate? How dare they profane such a perfect concept with their pitiful, petty, ignorant complaints? How dare they try to tell me that they are better people than I?
One of the biggest tenets of Christianity is that all people are equal before God. And it is not a surreal, Animal-Farm-esque “some people are more equal than others” equality: all people are equal before God, Period. Nobody is better than anybody else. And yet, so many followers are full of pride and hubris and the honest belief that they are somehow better than everybody else. How can they justify this? How do they? Have they ever actually thought about anything, or are they actually the brainless robots I perceive them to be?
The final problem I have with organized religion is that it tends to concentrate power. And power corrupts. Anybody who is driven enough and motivated enough by their belief to ascend to power should not be allowed to have that power.
What organized religion tends to do with power is the biggest reason that I distrust it. Instead of using its power for good...building homeless shelters, feeding the hungry, working to cure the sick...power is often directed to hateful things: the destruction of womens rights, the tar-and-feathering of Gays, and in some cases outright racist causes. Back in the 60's, churches used to actively preach against civil rights for Black persons. The Catholic church still tries to undermine valid science because it fears science and knowledge. Organized religion does sometimes use its power for good, but too much of it is devoted to evil for me to be comfortable with it. And that is why I will never fully trust religion as a whole.
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