Mystery solved

I figured out why my blog post never showed up. Grr. It should have worked but it didn't.

Famous little words: "It should have ..." It should have rained, it should have been okay, it should have hurt his feeling (or not hurt his feelings), etc. Words like "it should have" are more about our perception of what we would like rather than an understanding of reality.

Perhaps this is one reason why most religions annoy the crap out of me. There's an implied 'you should' in almost every tenet of faith and I really dislike someone else telling me what I should do, especially when those people claim to be channeling a deity or speaking for a deity.

The leaders are (let's face it) just human and why should I believe them? I mean, look what happens when people blindly follow leadership like that: 'drink the Kool-Aid and all will be well' or 'kill those people because they're different than us'. All religions are cults of some kind. Many are less objectionable than others, but most demand a change of personality and surrender by their followers. Is this a good thing?

The rare times I hear a religious discussion I take a step back and look at the "you should" objectively. Is it a reasonable request or idea or concern? Is it realistic? Or is it just a control mechanism clothed in the voice of the deity (you have only to look at some of the larger church organizations and some their policies to see what I mean).

I've been pondering this lately because I'm getting ready to embark on rewrites to my 'end of the world' books in which I pit the few remaining religious people ('few' because they were wiped out by a plague) against those who have no time for organized religion (literally 'no time' -- time is running out for the human race). So I've been reading a lot about religions and how the leaders manage their followers (most religions are run like a business, which I find fascinating). I suspect ponderings like this will continue until I actually start to put words on paper. Then, hopefully, it'll be full steam ahead because my characters will take over the writing.

Until then I'll let the ideas simmer in the back of my brain while I work on other writing. But I'm hoping, someday soon, to dig deeply into those books. I've found I really like the world I created there...