by Raymond Alexander Kukkee

Created on: May 12, 2009   Last Updated: May 13, 2009

Perhaps the most glaring and significant problem with religion today is the spectacular failure to distinguish between religion involving genuine, spiritual belief in God and the practice of arbitrary, often self-serving worship effected with robotic ceremony. The two processes are as significantly different as the religious organizations themselves profess to be. The question as to whether spiritual completeness is achieved only by expressing faith in an official manner under the banner of one approved dogma is valid . Does one right religion exist today?

In practice, large orthodox religious organizations have seemingly presumed a God-given right to dominate religion and prescribe spiritually correct dogma, yet vehemently proscribe and deny singular alternative beliefs. Smaller faith groups and unique groups of worshipers are challenged and denied religious importance as blasphemous sinners and cults.

Even with modern social enlightenment, affiliate churches, even those choosing alternative thought, including separation from a main congregation specifically to preserve once-important values of that very congregation, may be rejected for lack of social-religious conformity to edicts of the righteous.

Individuals shunted outside of mainstream society on religious grounds were also often alienated in community life, and scorned. Any direct challenge to the power wielded by churches and the express distaste for alternative worship not only necessitated forceful social alienation of the guilty, but guilt by association and the prediction that all such practitioners of such imperfect worship were, at best, destined for hell as non-believers, heathens, and heretics.

Elevation of specific doctrine to a self-proclaimed state of perfection and assuming the ultimate approval of God while simultaneously denigrating and minimizing alternative beliefs remains a questionable but common root cause of religious dissent.

Does any system of doctrine have the right to belittle or condemn other faiths? Thou shalt not judge immediately comes to mind. The concept of tolerance is brought to question. The concept of personal opinion arises. Let us not exclude the oft-ignored detail that mankind arrogantly even presumes to know the mind of God in loudly proclaiming both the protection and perfection of their specific beliefs and practices.

In fact, logic dictates the ultimate enigmatic religious question should first

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