Your Prescription Was a Sugar Pill...Better Find a Shaman.

The ultimate failure of religion is an expression of its irony. Organized religion is the ultimate contradiction in which personal salvation is prescribed through the umbilical of hierarchy by the very forces from which to be saved. The best evidence for this is the expectation that those who read about the experiences of the lost and saved will fully comprehend such concepts without themselves having had any such experiences.

The most obvious consequence of this contradiction, even though the faithful have usually thought of themselves as the only saved among a world of lost, is that it is now painfully obvious that the difference between the saved and the lost has nothing to do with which sacred texts they ascribe to or reject since all the various texts themselves have always been equally overconfident in their ability to lucidly inform on the nature of reality. This I glean from the behavior I've observed from the vast majority of the religious whom I have met.

I have heard the expression "I do not have beliefs, I have convictions," which is very easy for me to sympathize with. I'm not skilled at math but that's what it reminds me of. Math has few words and infinite implications. Like a conviction, it is not spoken, it is merely carried out and is relevant in every waking moment. I have had experiences that make the religious worldview seem like a cheap dream.