Religion?

Religion is defined as "a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects" by www.dictionary.com. But I beg to differ, this may have been religion once upon a time, not so much anymore. Religion these days does not quite fit that definition anymore. They still fit the general requirements but these days it seems far more like a business than a religion. Business is defined by www.dictionary.com as "a person, partnership, or corporation engaged in commerce, manufacturing, or a service; profit-seeking enterprise or concern." I feel this definition fits far better into so called religion today. If we read the definition we can see it says " . . . corporation engaged in a service; profit seeking enterprise . . ." Is this not what religion has become? If we look at how "The Church", for example, conducts their goings-on we see that they are running their "religion" as a business. This is how I see it, when they make people pay "tithe" they are making you pay for their service as it were. This is one reason why the religion is more like a business. Another reason is that religion used its people in the past to get what they want. Such as for example The Crusades. The Crusades were merely a money making venture if we look at it from an economic stand point. There was lots of monetary value in sending people to conquer new cities and taking over trade routes and such. Now try saying that religion isn't a business maybe in some ways this might not be true but as a whole religion is the best business ever established, and for that I commend religions everywhere.

Incarceration

http://www.barnorama.com/the-cold-hard-facts-about-incarceration/

The United States has the largest inmate population in the the world about 25%. There are more and more elderly people being put into jail every year. 90% of these prisoners are male, and 44% of those are black. Also 1 in every 100 men in the United States are in jail or on probation.
These stats personally frighten me into never wanting to go the the United States. The fact that they have the largest prison population in the world along with only 5 % of the worlds population means they are either too hard on people for committing lesser crimes or there isn't any effective crime prevention. I think that it is a little bit of both. America is notorious for jailing people for lesser crimes and most of those lesser crimes are possession of narcotics. Also The american community doesn't do much to prevent crime. Not to sound course, but the American population is overwhelmingly selfish, meaning that they don't care as long as it doesn't happen to them. Many people on top of that, have an attitude of "Just leave me alone in my living room with my toaster and TV, I'm not hurting anyone. . ." When they should be saying that this is unacceptable and it will not happen anymore. When we look at the amount of money being spent on prisoners each year and then look at how much is being spent on education, its no wonder there is a rise in crime. More and more youngsters are getting a bad education because the American government keeps cutting the education budget, while at the same time increasing the DOC's (department of corrections) budget. The point is that if more time is spent on preventing crime then less crime is likely to be committed, because educating kids is after all crime prevention.

Purity of expression

What do you think of when you hear the words "purity of expression" ? Well the other day I was listening to some one say that he wasn't happy when a "bitchy [sic] english professor" seemed unconcerned his purity of expression. This got me thinking, why is out purity of expression being stomped on daily? The fact of the matter is that we are being molded into conforming into society every time we get a bad grade for having missed the point of an assignment. But what if we hadn't missed the point? What if the point was there its just that the teacher didn't appreciate that it was done exactly how they wanted it. Much of what we say and do is skewed by what others want to hear. Imagine a world where everyone expressed them selves purely. it would be EXCELLENT! But this is not the case, most of what we say isn't pure at all. take for example people that censor themselves. Instead of coming out a straight up saying "fuck", which would be pure in expression because it is raw and untainted, because it is what was meant. It shows the emotions of what the person is feeling and far more effectively conveys the message. We have people that instead of expressing themselves purely saying things like "frek" or "fck", which to me is tainting what u mean to please others. Purity of expression does not mean swearing at all. In fact swearing itself can be tainting people's purity of expression. Take for example when a person curses every few words or so, all the time. That too taints the purity of his or her expression, because it is not allowing them to put out what is foremost on their minds. Instead they are diluting their words with pointless meaningless profanity, which when they need to use it to convey their emotion of anger or sadness may be lost on his or her audience, because the audience cannot see the true meaning behind it. So the point is to be pure in your expression, say what is pure and not what people want you to say.