A defence of organized religion: Introduction

Apologies in advance... this will be a long post!

In recent hours, I have been motivated to start compiling my thoughts on this issue, because my wanderings over the Internet have brought up a number of pages which I partially disagree with. These include Steve Pavlina's thoughts on religion, and a TIME article about a correlation between analytical thinking and a lack of organized religion (though in my time I have heard many, many opinions on this subject from my local church, talks I have attended at university, and the views of many of my friends and family among other things).

First of all, I would like to say that I think both of these articles raise some important points. They both point out that in organized religion, members are given an ethical and moral code which they are expected to follow, and that many people who belong to these religions follow these codes without giving them as much thought as they perhaps should. This is an important point which I feel is relevant to many followers of the world's major religions (Christianity, Islam and so forth). There is much being made of how this blind faith implies that organized religion in general is "spirituality for dummies", and this is the first point I'd like to discuss.

    Another important issue is that of problems within organized religion; Steve Pavlina's blog, for example, talks of religious people supporting their "local pedophile", presumably in relation to the scandals of child abuse that have gripped the Catholic Church in recent years. I'll discuss the social problems of organized religion, and what this means for its reputation.

    A third and final issue I'd like to discuss, is whether or not there are things about organized religion that are intrinsically good. It is my belief that these do exist, and in my view efforts should be made to save them; I will give a brief overview of how I think this should be done.

A few disclaimers before I start: 

• Firstly, I do not claim to be on the fence over this issue. After a period of soul-searching, I have come to a conclusion which I would like to share, and so that's what I'll do (though I'd love comments from people who both agree and disagree with me).
• I have been brought up as (and tenuously remain) Roman Catholic, though I have also worshipped in and have some knowledge of the Anglican Communion. As such, many references in this article will unfortunately be biased towards this corner of Christianity, but I am sure that many of the points I make are applicable to other large religions (perhaps someone knowledgeable can enlighten me on this).
• I recognize that much of what I simply does not represent the views of many followers of organized religion; when I can/remember, I try to point out where we differ, and the reasons why I think my arguments still apply. However, people are of course free to challenge/disagree with me on this. As a devout Christian (in one sense of the word at least), I hope that people won't feel  I'm being too hypocritical in my analysis of this issue; I can only say what I think.

So that these posts don't get too massive, I'll break my analysis down into three parts; Part 1 is to follow.

Links to: part 1, part 2, part 3