Religious people are encouraged to hate and fear "the world." In their understanding, the world is an awful and material place, full of evil and impurities.

This moral framing of reality says everything about the framer and nothing about what is. There are many things in the world that are bad for human beings, but rants about materialism strike me as particularly false. Religions exist in the material world. They gather in material buildings and need material money to promote and sustain their agendas.

A hatred and fear of reality easily leads to a hatred and fear of our physical beings and our very human minds. Therefore we are not to trust mind or body, but to obey the dictates of some enlightened prophet, pastor or priest...who cannot prove anything they say, but offer as evidence, "feelings."

Feelings are also material. They can be imaged in the brain, they leave biochemical signatures.

Hatred and fear of the world leads people to hate and fear themselves and each other and to idolize a nonexistent ideal.

I was raised with more fear and "pity" for the outside world since they didn't have the truth and no possible chance of real happiness, poor things. If the hatred was there it was more subliminal for me.

In my case, that teaching sort of back-fired because when I got out in the real world, I saw the opposite more easily because I was expecting the worst. I wouldn't have admitted it easily, but from the time I got on my mission I saw so much more beauty in the world that we didn't have because of our stifled ways.

I enjoyed reading your thoughts on this.