With religion, people pretend that all manner of goblins, gods, and demons exist. The have little magical rituals- like prayers, “church”, being “born again”, exorcisms, “communion”, and whatnot. They have a special vocabulary to describe these magical things, and the rituals themselves. This is designed to hide the reality of the acts and help them seem more mystical.
The believers sometimes have special clothing to wear, and props and talismans to carry and use for some of the magical rituals.
The “faithful” get very testy when you fail to treat their belief in imaginary friends with reverence. Even when unequivocally defending their undeniable right to believe any nonsense they wish to believe!
I have seen other people who do the exact same sorts of things, yet somehow manage to keep enjoying themselves without getting so serious as to murder people over it. These are the people involved in “live action role playing” or “LARP”.
Religion is the longest-running LARP game ever created. It makes much less sense and is based just as much on fantasy, yet people actually KILL and DIE over it. It’s time to stop treating it so seriously and see it for what it really is.
Tags: religion
