I want everyone to be critical of whatever every spokesperson says - especially when it comes to religious spokespersons. These people (priests, bishops, and the pope) hold a power that can sway many people's minds, and because of that these people should be held more accountable for what they say. Unfortunately for us, many of them don't have minds that are open: they are but mere parrots for the Orthodoxy to which they have sworn allegiance to; parrots for the Orthodoxy that has trained them to BE unthinking, unquestioning zealots.

So in trying to figure out a "fix" - no matter how minor it may be - I think it is pointless to ask clergymen (of any orthodox religion) to question their methods and what they say. Their close-mindedness to alternative points of view and their self-righteousness shifts the balance of responsibility of thinking things through towards the listeners. So in this essay, my burden is to prove why we should do the thinking/why we should be critical to whatever we hear coming from "esteemed institutions" (of Christianity, Islam, etc.).

The primary problem that I have with many religious spokespersons is that they do not explain clearly why their belief holds value. That does not mean that they don't explain at all - it's just that oftentimes they liberally use unproven, unprovable, or arbitrary conditions, foremost of which is that "God says so". It is a very convenient excuse since they refer to 'faith' as their reason and invite you to 'take the leap' as well - thereby circumventing much of critical thought when it comes to assessing the stance/position/opposing sides of any debate. One should be wary of such invitations since it really is a distraction to thought: since you can't think about it, don't. It seems to me that religious spokespersons use this line of "thought" to people to get them to believe in whatever religious matter without having to explain... and them getting away with it.

There needs to be a counter-balance to this insinuation of "unquestionable belief". There is an urgent need for as many people to be able to spot the fallacies and arbitrariness that is being planted into the minds of people by orthodoxies, and how they get away with it.

First, the source of religious tenets - "holy" documents - are arbitrary in their "holiness". Divinities did not write these documents: human hands did. Assuming but not conceding that "divine inspiration" did help human hands write these documents, or assuming but not conceding that these documents are sincere, the validity of actions and statements made within those documents are severely weakened because of their inapplicability to today's world. Simply put: the times have changed. The situation today is radically and fundamentally more different than what was when these documents were written 2000, 500, or even 100 years ago, and as such the new complexity of the times naturally makes statements within these documents irrelevant.

There is of course the fact that orthodoxies interpret and REinterpret these documents to "suit the times". Therein lies ANOTHER layer of arbitrariness - the mere fact that these people do change these documents words and interpretative details does mean that these documents do not necessarily hold truths. Not only that, but the people who do make the interpretations and reinterpretations also suffer from mistakes, misconceptions, and the occasional myopia - and what makes it worse was that during the times when these mistakes were not corrected, dogma was Law, and the laity were heavily discouraged to question the text and interpretations. Furthermore, we can expect changes on the "official" interpretations sometime in the future, meaning these orthodoxies do make mistakes - mistakes that they have not yet seen, or more likely, mistakes that they do not believe that they've made.

Orthodoxies and religious groups are naturally "behind the times" in their perspectives. That is their conservative nature being manifested, but not only that, it is because these groups are prone to stay within their comfort zones of conservativeness that makes them less likely to consider newer perspectives and newer frames of thought. What makes this a "bad" thing is that older frames of thought take into consideration less factors. It's because old frames of looking at things come from "ye olde times" when, for example, electronics haven't existed, or world wars. So these "old-fashioned perspectives" can make its adherents cripplingly myopic.