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Religion – ALL text ON THE SCREEN IF POSSIBLE

-          It could bring happiness

-          Wow, so many things I don’t need- the Dalai Lama

-          To continue with humor:

-          If we respected “Religiously” the rules of happiness we would reach Nirvana

-          Jokingly: I am thinking of a New Religion that maybe you would like to adhere to:

-          The Religion of Happiness, without punishments, “sacred cows or divinities”…

-          In her  extraordinary chef d’oeuvre, The How of Happiness, Sonja Lyubomirsky offers 12 rules

-          One of them is taking care of your soul, being spiritual, even if this does not necessarily imply religion

-          Religion provides Strong Social Support- one of the key factors, the one the happiest people share

-          Gives meaning to existence

-          A sense of belonging, rituals, comfort and the feeling of hope…

-          If indeed in another life…

-          The American state of Utah is the second happiest state for 2017

-          It ranks at number 1 in terms of community perception

-          Utah is probably the most religious of all US states

-          In one study it was compared with Nevada, where Sin city, casinos can be found…

-          On the other hand, in the camp opposing religion we have Nathaniel Branden

-          The ultimate expert on Self- Esteem, he is the author of the classic :

-          The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

-          And he is not alone in pointing out negative effects of religion

-          With him in the same camp we find Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins, Ricky Gervais

In his work The Psychological Effects of Religion, Nathaniel Branden argues that

There are no positive effects, only traumatic and negative

-              What upsets the professor most?

-              The attitude, especially in the Catholic faith, towards sex as being wrong and only there for procreation

The idea of an all seeing Supreme Being that is always watching can have a terrible impact, if we consider that in most families the idea instilled from an early age, in a “disturbing attempt at educating the child”:

-              There is a god that sees Everything you do, all the bad things you do

And there are many other features, like if you desire the wife of another it is like you had intimate relations with her.

Then the fear that God can take your soul while you sleep, because of some sin, masturbating many years back for instance.

As the author says:

-              “If that would not be enough to cause insomnia, what would?”

A priest or nun would not be too happy to read that most of them enter their “profession „because of some impulse to act like they have the higher ground.

Nathaniel Branden is careful to avoid the mistake of Freud who used overgeneralization and says that not all, but probably most of the priests and nuns have that tendency or base for choosing their “calling”.

The fact that religious people believe in life after death is harmful, because they do not realize that this is all there is and so they do not dedicate all their energies to make the best they can over here, knowing there is a second chance does not help concentrating all the efforts on the “only one”.

The idea of original sin is bad, the fact that Christianity has degraded the position of women, which declined after the fall of the Roman Empire and the ascent of Christianity, with an established position of woman as responsible for tempting Adam out of the Garden of Eden.

-              What God is for man, man is for woman

-          Karen Armstrong, C. S. Lewis would argue for a different take on religion

-          Why would God allow the Holocaust, suffering and death of babies

-          Free will

-          Almighty, omniscient?

-          The texts of the bible and other fundamental religious books must not be taken literally

-          Indeed, those who do that cause for damage to religion than most atheists

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