Faith and the mind...

The more I study about Judaism (and to a lesser degree, Islam), the more I realise at the heart of the faith is ritual. It's not really about belief, it's about doing things that will make god happy. Why? Who knows. You just do it because of tradition. I think this is probably true of Confucianism (sans the deity and add some learning), and a lot of the Dharmic/Iranian religions. But, that said, there is ritual in every faith. And it's not just ritual once a year, or twice, alot of it's daily ritual. Now, as a person with obessive compulsive disorder, I really have to wonder, were all these great religious founders simply OCD sufferers?

It would certainly make sense. In Islam, the ritual washing and purification before entering the mosque, five times a day, right down to obsessive details like washing in between the toes, really strikes me as something that only a person with a problem with germs and contamination would think up. Similarly, kosher food in Judaism, the milk and the meat, the huge amounts of laws that Confucian ministers had to learn for their exams. All of them - OCD.

But you know what? Obessession isn't a healthy state of mind. So is religion. Both of them should go. Let's all stop pretending and go on zoloft or some such, and just chuck faith out the door. And then at last, all those OCD people with scrupulosity (i.e. me) can finally get a rest and stop worrying about the whole damn thing.