Adherence to any religion may be either a personal convenience or a flaming conviction. It is reckoned enough to be labelled a member of some conventional orthodox and organized religious community to be regarded as having fulfilled religious duty. Because men measure human spirituality by human conformity, history mocks them and punishes their error with evils and crimes, with sordid happenings and brutal deeds. Whatever faith a man attaches himself to, outside the faith of his forefathers, will depend partly on his intellectual level and partly on his personal inclinations. If he is sincere, he will illustrate the difference between the social inheritance and profound conviction motives, as well as demonstrate the superiority of the conscious adoption of a faith after wide search and comparative examination over the mere inheritance of a faith after geographical accident or chance of birth. For the source and form of religious belief have usually been the parents of the believer. Men accept their faith from their fathers and never question it. Yet is what his forefathers happened to believe in religion a valid standard of what is true in religion? What shall it profit a man if he enters a religious building merely because his neighbours expect him to go, or if he takes part in a religious gathering for the same reason that soldiers take part in military drill? It is impossible for those held in creedal chains or organizational straitjackets to keep their judgement free and their thinking unconditional. A respect for the human personality cannot submit entirely to the extremism which would impose a rigid straitjacket of total authoritarianism. Indeed, a man is likely to be harmed by it. This happens as soon as he allows his leaders to imprison him in the tradition or enslave him in the institution. He is then no longer able to benefit by, and is instead robbed of, all the other knowledge or inspiration available outside the little space in which he is shut. The men of this era have to be led closer to the freedom of their higher self. No organization can do this because all organizations necessarily demand fealty and impose bondage.
-- Notebooks Category 17: The Religious Urge > Chapter 1 : Origin, Purpose of Religions > # 219
