Solaris said:Take people who claim to be free thinkers—though I doubt they actually are. They tell others to just follow faith blindly because they view it as a limitation, essentially tying it directly to dogma.
They limit their own perception of faith by reducing it to nothing more than a set of rigid dogmas.
Instead of digging into the actual roots of their religions, they toss them aside after only a superficial glance. Then, they simply swap one religion for another, treating the new one with the same lack of depth. In short, they have no idea what they’re looking for, yet they hide behind the guise of philosophical freedom and individual liberty.
Solaris! You’re talking about those who claim to reject dogma only to fall straight into a different version of it. That happens, of course, when there’s a blind belief in the very doctrines you're mentioning, without any critical examination of how they actually play out in practice. We really need to distinguish dogma from teaching. Teaching is what you refer to as the "roots"—the core essence. Dogma is just a superficial layer of rules and prejudices lacking any true understanding of that core. You mentioned people rejecting "their religion," but which religion are we talking about? Surely you don't believe that everyone in America is forced to be Catholic or Christian just because they were born here, without any right to choose or question it. I hope you don't think that; I follow your posts, and such a stance would surprise me. I agree with you that people use the excuse of "freedom" to justify all sorts of nonsense, but we shouldn't generalize. We can't dismiss the sincere seekers—those who, despite being different from us, are genuinely searching and, more importantly, building values that benefit society as a whole.