10

Religions Are Made Up

Religions are made up. This isn’t a bad thing: everything we humans do is made up. Religions are made up the same way Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is made up, and the same way Margaret Fuller’s Transcendentalism is made up, and the same way Freud’s psychotherapy is made up. This is what it is to be human: we make things up.

Some of what we make up is liberating, and some of what we make up is enslaving; some of what we make up is utopian, and some of what we make up is dystopian; some of what we make up can be proven by science, and some of what we make up can be proven by poetry; but it is all made up.

The problem isn’t that religion is made up; the problem is that religions can’t admit they are made up.

RR