perandre
Member
A common truism in here, is that organized religion is bad, and an enemy of the truth. While "organized" perhaps sounds ok, "religion" rings bad ...and together, it's more of a monster. Now, this thread is not for listing bad stuff done by, say, the Catholic church or radical Islam; not very interesting.
If you've had a spiritual eureka moment, and share it with your neighbor, you might end up meeting up regularly to discuss it. Is it organized yet? No really. But a few years down the road, you might have put your teachings into a book (dogma!), and you find yourself being the leader of a small crowd (hierarchy!).
We tend to hate on the big older players, while being more accepting with the smaller, newer crowds.
About 10 years ago, when a small rural Swedish pentecostal church was all over the news; they had grown to adopt some weird teachings, and it culminated in murder++. Would it perhaps be a good idea if there was some level of leadership in the movement, overseeing each other a bit? For the movement as a whole (and the murdered and/or disillusioned people), a better organization would perhaps be helpful.
TL;DR: Most spiritual ideas get "organized" at some point, and we should judge each idea by it's own merit, not by level of organization.
If you've had a spiritual eureka moment, and share it with your neighbor, you might end up meeting up regularly to discuss it. Is it organized yet? No really. But a few years down the road, you might have put your teachings into a book (dogma!), and you find yourself being the leader of a small crowd (hierarchy!).
We tend to hate on the big older players, while being more accepting with the smaller, newer crowds.
About 10 years ago, when a small rural Swedish pentecostal church was all over the news; they had grown to adopt some weird teachings, and it culminated in murder++. Would it perhaps be a good idea if there was some level of leadership in the movement, overseeing each other a bit? For the movement as a whole (and the murdered and/or disillusioned people), a better organization would perhaps be helpful.
TL;DR: Most spiritual ideas get "organized" at some point, and we should judge each idea by it's own merit, not by level of organization.