I do not advocate church-based anything. Our Constitution does not, and I do not, recognize any religion or religious group as having any authority, moral or legal, over US citizens.
Any religion or religious group attempting to exert "authority" over any citizen of the USA is attempting to impose some "form of tyranny over the mind of man" that violates the rights of free citizens.
I do not care what religion you escaped from, or what religion you are now enslaved by, or what religion dominates your obsessions, whether for or against.
In this country, people have a right to worship as they see fit, so long as they do not infringe on the rights of others in the process. Unfortunately, most religions and religious people are not content to respect the rights of others.
In My Not-So-Humble Opinion, churches and religions are for those who cannot, or choose not to, believe in God. The church or religion serves as an idol for those people to worship until they are ready to believe, if ever. People can flee from one church to another, from one set of lies to another, and they will still find that any group of people will be corrupted just like any other group of people.
If the zealots could or would read for themselves, they could find one of those Bibles with red letters in the New Testament for the parts that Christ said, and black letters for everything that the idiot disciples made up to fill in the blanks.
Christ had pretty much the same opinion of organized religion as I have expressed above. The idiot disciples went out and created exactly what he told them to avoid, and subsequent centuries of idiots have propagated the idiocy. Relatively few have ever paused to ask God to help them see the truth; relatively few have recognized or accepted any piece of truth that God has revealed in the past two millenia; relatively few have any interest in seeking truth or honesty. Watch. More idiots will spring forth below to prove my point, babbling the same nonsense someone else told them to babble, and which they have never had the faith, courage, or integrity to personally question or investigate.
Uh, actually, not He didn't. You just posted inconsistent drivel.
How is it inconsistent? On the one hand, you attempt to sanction the "red letters" of Jesus...well, a few of those "red-letter" Jesus phrases reads thusly:
18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it."/I> (Jesus, Matthew 16:18)
So here Jesus claimed that HE would build a "forever" church...one that couldn't be overtaken by His spiritual enemies.
On the other hand, you've apparently 100% negated the reality that a church built by Jesus could sustain itself all these centuries -- and citing "Meads 3:16" -- have come up with an "anti-gospel":
"In My Not-So-Humble Opinion, churches and religions are for those who cannot, or choose not to, believe in God. The church or religion serves as an idol for those people to worship until they are ready to believe, if ever...the New Testament...black letters [are] for everything that the idiot disciples made up to fill in the blanks."
So which is it Meads? Do Jesus' red letters actually stand the test of time and have ANY authority over you? (Like Matthew 16:18?) Or is that just lip service by you and you now live 100% as your own "god" -- your own lord/spiritual authority in your life?
Where's the coherency and consistency in these statements above that openly clash?
Again, you are sadly mistaken because you have no nuanced understanding of "authority." There's LEGAL authority; and then there's SPIRITUAL authority.
Any religion or religious group attempting to exert SPIRITUAL authority is exposing that authority to a group of people; it has not the LEGAL authority to be imposing. You sadly seem ill-advised to know the distinction between the two.
Every commercial you see on TV, radio, the Web, billboards, etc. is a marketer's attempt to expose their worldview to us. They don't "impose" tyranny upon us.
Likewise, any message that has a religious underpinning may "expose" some kind of "frown" upon what you're doing or not doing, but that hardly constitutes either "tyranny" or militating vs. the "free rights of citizens"...unless you want to provide some strictly SPECIFIC LEGAL examples for discussion.
In this country, people have a right to worship as they see fit, so long as they do not infringe on the rights of others in the process. Unfortunately, most religions and religious people are not content to respect the rights of others...I do not care what religion you escaped from, or what religion you are now enslaved by, or what religion dominates your obsessions, whether for or against."
Actually, it's apparent you do care, after all...otherwise you wouldn't be tossing around words like "tyranny" and "violate" -- all minus ANY examples whatsoever of where religious folks have ACTUALLY imposed certain LEGAL tyrannies or violations upon others.
And, hey, I've got news for you: A legal right to practice religion doesn't come with a legal mandate to others that all others MUST respect the worldviews that accompany that religion.
If you elect you worship the tulips in your backyard, I respect your LEGAL right to practice it; that doesn't mean I have to respect the veracity of it -- and that your tulip-worship is somehow immune to critique. (That's BOTH ludicrous and hypocritical...because somebody's "right to worship as they see fit" often includes the religious worshipful to critique competing worldviews!)
Unfortunately, most religions and religious people are not content to respect the rights of others.
You simply need to clarify this statement. If you accuse religious people of ACTUALLY taking away LEGAL rights of others, then be specific vs. generic/vague in your accusations. If, instead, you simply mean that because you've detect a "frown" upon the faces of some religious people over how others utilize their religious rights, then sorry...you don't have the legal OR moral authority to mandate how people's faces are to be arranged while they assess others' religious worldviews.
Otherwise, since you seem to frown yourself upon how some of us on FR choose to "worship" in the form of how we express our religious vantage points on FR, you would thereby be guilty of the very disrespect you generically accuse others of!