jgnat,
I enjoy reading your insightful posts. Your observations of JWism are spot on.
Is religion a pox on mankind? I want to share an observation from a program on the History channel on the development of humans that I watched some time ago. The earliest Neandertals did not bury their dead but left them in the open like the animals around them. There is evidence that at some point in their evolution they began burying their dead. The commentator postulated that at this point early man developed imagination. To me that makes sense that this was the beginning of religion. Now they could imagine that there was something after death; that there were gods controlling the natural phenomena they saw around them. Over time this morphed into elaborate mythologies. A cursory review of civilization shows that each one's religion is a reflection of their culture.
Today we see thousands of religions and sects of religions. To me this shows the great imaginations of mankind. Religious groups span the spectrum from benign to destructive and everything in between. They can fulfill our need for community and belonging. But they can also foster extreme hatred, a sense of superiorty, exclusivity, us-versus-them, genocide, wars, subjugation of women, ignorance, etc. It was out of religion that came the Crusades, the Inquisition, and numerous holy wars.
Religion is a pox (a virus disease; plague, curse) when it imposes itself on those who do not hold the same views. An excellent book on this subject is "The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Cultlure" by Darrel W. Ray.
Reopened Mind