...And faith will make you blind...

Religion as all the things in the nature evolves. At first there were pagan religions, polytheist, and with little organization but then some of them became highly organized institutions. With that they added an unprecedented power to the concept of religion and the evolution of these religions ended up making almost all other forms of pagan religions obsolete. Now these are considered the greatest religions of today and almost all of them share the same traits:

1. They are very organized.
2. They have written rules to follow.
3. They teach their own moral code.

But more important, and that's what allowed them to maintain such a big power over the centuries:

4. They promote unquestioning faith.

I totally disagree with the last statement: its purpose is to maintain control of the believers who cannot question at all anything said by the institution, and this has resulted in absolut power from generation to generation through the centuries. However, this method is not perfect, there is a breaking point, which is the reason why the overall percentage of people subscribed to a particular religion has declined in the last 50 years: education.

The more educated the person, and society, the easier it is to understand the reason why these institutions operate as they do. That is, as many religions say in many passages, " The truth shall set you free", really ironical but true.

The key point is that it was not God (or any other deity), who founded these institutions, it was, in fact ordinary men. Also these institutions do not follow their own rules, they have changed their views with the passing of the years. Like the case of Galileo, which was condemned by the church for saying the Earth was round and it revolves around the sun. Obviously the church retracted that behavior, and now they have a statue of him in the Vatican. That means that the rules are not absolute, so that the current rules should not be regarded as unquestionable truths and that today's truths are very likely to be changed in the future, as it suits or not the institution.

Then are you part of a Religion or of an Organized institution?