| All aggression happening in the world around us, | | | | kills it, and mounts it to a piece of cardboard with a |
| based on any religious belief systems clearly show | | | | pin through it's middle where it decays. Looking at the |
| that the difference between ‘religion' and | | | | dead insect will give you none of the experience of |
| ‘belief' is not well-understood. We all look out for | | | | witnessing the actual living flying butterfly. Truthfully, |
| a spiritual awe or expereince in our lives. Inorder to | | | | it would be difficult to say that you had even seen a |
| express any experiences we confide or believe in, | | | | butterfly- as you look at the dead one on a display |
| we need a system. A belief system. Religion in my | | | | card. |
| opinion, is an attempt to codify and formalize a | | | | |
| spiritual experience. But that formalization distorts and | | | | This is the analogy. Religion takes some spiritual |
| destroys what it was attempting to preserve or | | | | experience that may have once been alive, kills it, |
| control, in the first place. | | | | and tries to pass it off as something living. In my |
| | | | | opinion this is the true evil of religion. The more we |
| Take butterfly collecting for example. When I see | | | | try to preserve or protect our spiritual expereince |
| the brightly colored wings fluttering by, full of life and | | | | through religious activites, the more we are killing it. |
| beauty, I say that it is a wonderful butterfly. Then | | | | Let us keep spirituality alive, not kill it. |
| someone comes by with a net catches the butterfly, | | | | |