Manipulation through the Divine

While a lot of people see religion as a good way to live, other people
see it as a way to control and manipulate people. Most of people accept
religion as it is, without questioning it’s origins, it’s goals, or even why it
exist. The “owners” of the world created this kind of tool to command
people to do what is convenient to then in exchange of the salvation of
something people fear to lose: their lives, their souls.

There are many ways of manipulations, all disguised so people

wouldn’t find out how they are being controlled. One way is the classical
example of what parents tell to children: “do that and you will not go to
heaven”, or, “don’t lie, God will punish you and you will go to hell”. This is
the most ridiculous, stupid argument that most Christians uses to tell
people, usually children, to not to do what they want, and that totally have
no ground. First because the people who say that probably did, in some
point of his life something far more worse than what they telling then not to
do, and secondly, even if it don’t look like, it’s a way to manipulate then.
There also the trauma that a child has to face when they hear that. Imagine
that your son lies to you, and you say that because of that, God don’t like
him. You son can interpretate this not as a lesson of moral to stop lying for
God like him again, but something more macabre, like “well, God hate me
for lying, so now I’m going to hell, there is no salvation for me, so I’m going
to do what I want. I want his shoes, so I’m going to steal it. I’m going to hell
anyways, so it’s okay”. And there you go, a greenhorn criminal on the
streets.

But to prevent people of stop following their religion, they created

something for people who committed some kind of sin. A form of
redemption, when you have to tell to a completely stranger all the sins you
committed during your life. And, like magic, your file is clean; you’re not
going to hell because you told your father that your brother broke his watch,
not you. With this new utility, people can have a second chance, a third
chance, a forty-seventh chance of redemption. Well, it’s a good way to keep
the cattle in order, but there is a major flaw on that. If someone is
murdered, and the murderer confesses to a priest that he killed someone in
cold blood, by the rules of the Catholic Church, the priest cannot denounce
this person to the police, because confession is a sacred act of redemption
before God, in which the priest is only an intermediate between God and the
sinner. So there you go, another criminal outside of the jail.

But something more abusive and manipulative of those mentioned

above, is the false promises and miracle some priests and pastors promises
to do. But that come with a cost; money. There is a channel on television
called “Rede Milagre” (in Portuguese) that literally sells miracles. People
who wasn’t able to walk suddenly start running for just R$49,99; others start
hearing better for only R$ 35,00. Yes, it totally distorts the idea of religion,
but those people do that in the name of religion, so religion plays a huge
role on this. All because those people try to imitate in a very primitive and
selfish way the “miracles” that a wise and good man performed.
Remembering that something that he always said when he healed someone:
“Your faith healed you”. Not money. Another example of “cure through
money” is “Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus” (in Portuguese). I went there
once. They literally brainwash you. They ask what you can and what you
cannot. They incentive you to give money to then, they say your piece of
heaven is guaranteed. I saw a man giving the deed of a firm as a “humble”
contribution. And they announced that. I cannot even start to count the
number of inconsistencies we have here. First, you cannot buy your
salvation, you must earn. Second, miracles cannot be sold nor realized. If
you were born blind, it will not be a miracle, but a surgery that will make
you see. Third, you don’t have to give money to the church to get rid of your
problems, you must face then heads up and believe in yourself, not in some
divinity that, even if it existed, wouldn’t give a damn for you. Those are just
ways to take your money, your hard earned profit, as some kind of tax for
the good services Catholicism proportionate to us.

Those are very few examples of domination of religion over us. They
imprint on your mind that they are the good people, the emissaries of God,
the harbingers of salvation, while they only here to domain people who
follows their teachings. And to those who don’t follow? They are heretics,
and they have no acknowledgment from most of our religious society. They
give more value to a person ideology than of the good deeds this person did
to society.