I’m a believer. I have written about this many times. I don’t deny that I still believe that Jehovah is the father and Christ is the ultimate Savior.

Yet, I also acknowledge that religion is a sweet poison. A poison we sometimes need to swallow deliberately to release us from worry and stress, to find solace in something we believe will be able to heal our broken hearts, and to give hope when things go awry in this uncertain and chaotic world. Yet, religion is so sweet a poison that if we take too big a dose, our sanity would collapse and vanish.

A person, after all, must be realistic enough to understand that salvation doesn’t come for free externally, but most importantly it comes through internal enlightenment. If you think that by joining a religion, then salvation comes as a complimentary bonus, well, that’s a part of the persuasive power of a poison.

We need to save ourselves, first and foremost, by opening our hearts and minds.

If a religion helps us understand this important part of our life’s journey, then it is a good dose, which is not yet poisonous, but healing instead.

I still drink my sweet poison every day. I pray relentlessly in sickness and in health, in happiness and in grieving periods, in good and in bad days.

And I think it is healing to be taken in a light dose, just like alcohol, which otherwise can overwork our liver so much that we can collapse and die.

Beware, though, for religion is more lethal than any poison known to humankind.

If you consider religion as the handbook of morality, think again. Morality has long existed without religion. Religion emerged because of morality.

Thus, teaching a child that “God is always watching” is hilarious because the parent thinks that God is a CCTV. God isn’t a CCTV or a handbook and will not be one, despite what uninformed individuals think and believe.

The correct way of doing things is what matters and can be sought within through our own enlightened self-guidance, regardless of whether one does or doesn’t adopt any institutionalized religion.

Atheists are wired in their brain not to need to drink the sweet poison every night before bedtime. And it is a respectable choice indeed.

Like eros love, religion is both intoxicating and lethal. Neuroscientists have argued that it is the wiring in the brain that makes someone highly religious or not at all. Whether you trust science or believe in mystical principles, sweet poison must be taken with care and awareness.

Perhaps some day I’ll be able to live without swallowing this sweet poison anymore and I look forward to it.

Meanwhile, a religion is a place where I can safely make wishes and dream about what would happen next after experiencing a tumultuous life journey or even to dream about the afterlife.

Such wishes and dreams are encapsulated in something called “faith”.

At this point in life, religion to me is a nice warm bed every night and a smiling motherly figure singing lullabies. A religion is not an order to do things or not to do things. What I choose to do is based on my own considerations.

And a religion sometimes plays a role because when I’m drinking sweet poison, I feel elated and more positive about the present, the future, and the days after I die.

Internal enlightenment occurs when we make decisions based on priorities and not harming others. Collective individual enlightenment would create a culture of strong internality, instead of showing off with “holy attributes”. A sweet poison has reached its most poisonous deadly form when people who call themselves “religious” start killing and hurting others physically or mentally.

Being a believer or a non-believer has nothing to do with one’s internal enlightenment.

Intellectually and affectively, we can heighten our awareness without having to drink too much of this sweet poison.

And being an atheist as a choice may also be evidence of internal enlightenment, for he or she can survive without having to rely on some abstract ideas and dogmas handed down from ancient times.

A non-violent atheist is much more enlightened than a violent religious individual, who believes that killing others is a duty to reach a place called Heaven.

It is a misconception buried so deep in some religious individuals, because heaven is not a place. Heaven is a state of mind.

you are right all the way,but you are critically wrong in two ways...
Christianity is not a religion but a lifestyle...your personal encounter with Jesus....religion is a sweet poison,true!..but not Christianity because it is a lifestyle...
heaven is not a state of mind...it is a destination, a place...
you are still yet to know him,come closer to be unveiled

how

Explain

So u think.

A rational theist?ADONBELIVIT!

lie

Hmn

but if so

Ajibam: you are right all the way,but you are critically wrong in two ways...
Christianity is not a religion but a lifestyle...your personal encounter with Jesus....religion is a sweet poison,true!..but not Christianity because it is a lifestyle...
heaven is not a state of mind...it is a destination, a place...
you are still yet to know him,come closer to be unveiled

You cannot have an encounter with Jesus.the dude died and did not rise as you were falsely made to believe. The belief that Jesus resurrected is the bedrock of Christianity and that made it a religion!

re·li·gion
/riˈlijən/
Noun

The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, esp. a personal God or gods.
Details of belief as taught or discussed.

Synonyms
faith - belief - creed - denomination

The believe in God, common sense and a good conscience is good enough. I no want man made rules.

Too much of reading of Karl Marx or Marx's influenced writtings is worrying the O.P.''religion is the opium of the masses''

ifeness:

You cannot have an encounter with Jesus.the dude died and did not rise as you were falsely made to believe. The belief that Jesus resurrected is the bedrock of Christianity and that made it a religion!

re·li·gion
/riˈlijən/
Noun

The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, esp. a personal God or gods.
Details of belief as taught or discussed.

Synonyms
faith - belief - creed - denomination

He rose from the death.
Conquered Hell and grave.
Why are you so angry?

ariseandshine:

He rose from the death.
Conquered Hell and grave.
Why are you so angry?

That is not true! your level of understanding concerns me

seniourman: I posted world widest mouth with Pics to prove
sexkilz
not only remove my post but ban me for trolling
but the twelve yer old
boy been burnt alive did,nt make the front page.
I posted d video link from youtube.. sexkilz just ban
me
for nuisance is sexkilz doing this for me to get angry
or
he want people to hate Nairaland

nd u're stil doin wat'll earn u a ban,because u're derailing

Ơ̴̴̴̴͡.̮Ơ̴̴̴͡ my signature below
* a candid advice*

Ajibam: you are right all the way,but you are critically wrong in two ways...
Christianity is not a religion but a lifestyle...your personal encounter with Jesus....religion is a sweet poison,true!..but not Christianity because it is a lifestyle...
heaven is not a state of mind...it is a destination, a place...
you are still yet to know him,come closer to be unveiled

so you know him??

The history of the world over centuries is littered with dead religions, dead gods and dead worshipers. In some ways, we are all children of a retired god. Key events in the world always retire religions and their gods. Traumatic world events always prove the old religions inadequate. The coming of the Europeans, for instance, essentially laid to eternal rest a lot of the African gods. Other events and movements like the Enlightenment reform religion. Reformation extends the life of a religion. An irreformable religion is one that is bound to implode.

The tragedy of Africa is that it reached the information age without first passing through the industrial age. In matters temporal, Africa got to the modern age without passing through the Enlightenment. That is why some people believe that a child was born holding a mini-Koran in its hand, or that a child came out of the womb holding a cross in its hand. Why mini-Koran? Why a cross? Why something we already know? Why does this kind of phenomenon only happen in societies that wallow in superstition? If it is a message from God, as some believe, why won’t God use the opportunity to send a definitive manual of life?

The Enlightenment instituted the culture of demanding empirical proof before believing. If a woman comes into the church and gives birth to a dead horse, you don’t clean up the floor and bury the horse. You send the horse to the lab and the woman to the hospital- mental and/or medical.

Every religion that comes begets a new one. Two hundred years from now the people that will occupy this world will look at our era and our religions that we fight for and die for and call our age the Extreme Dark Ages. In another two hundred thousand years, nobody will remember what god we fought for, killed for, or died for. Just like we have no idea what god the people who were on this earth 100,000 years ago fought for, killed for or died for.

It is hard to imagine it now, but after the Third World War and after a nuclear war, a new world will emerge with new religions. The old religions left standing will go through reformation. And subtly and gradually, new religions will replace the old. Because it takes hundreds of years for this kind of transformation to be visible, it is hard for those living in that age to notice the change as it happens. We won’t wake up one day and notice that our religion is dead.

It is hard to live without the concept of God because it is hard to live without an answer to the original questions, even if it is not definitive. That is why many will stick with their religion as if it is their parents. Virtually all religions place God beyond reach- at times above the sky. Do you know why? If God is within reach, God will suffer the fate of all parents – be critiqued and be seen to have fallen short.

The trouble with religion is that for every religion to survive and gain members and fend off competitions, it has to proclaim itself to be better than the others. That my religion is better than yours is like saying that my moon is better than yours. That my God is better than yours is to say that my sun is better than yours.

To be willing to fight for your God- which is to say, kill and die for your God, is like to climb on top of each other to pull the moon until it stands still on your side of the sky. It may sound stupid but it has been done before and continues to be done.

Those who worshipped the Greek gods used to believe that they had the final answer. Those who worshipped Oduduwa used to think that their story of the creation was the ultimate. The highest level of human stupidity is the belief that our religion is the final answer to these original questions- who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? Who made me? The arrogance of that assumption has no equal in human folly.

Religions come and go but the earth remains the same. Until we know the definitive truth about the very beginning; and until we answer the original questions without a doubt, religion will remain attractive. But religion will continue to promise us that we find the answers only when we die. Science is the only one trying to find answers to these questions while we are still alive. And science is the only one trying to get to the very beginning and empirically show it to us for the very first time. It may take science one million years to get there. But I am rooting for science not religion.