Real Vs. Manufactured

Warning:  The following quotation is taken from a website with a strong ideological preference.  I refer to it as I thought some of the observations about the "messiness" of religion, science, and intelligence were interesting.  After all, this weblog exists to provoke thought and not just to help find Jesus' face in a pirogi.  There are plenty of websites, and churches, schools, and cable news channels, that will leave you unchallenged and artificially affirmed.

The real ocean is complicated and messy. So is real intelligence. Manufactured intelligence is the fashion model playing a genius in a movie. Real intelligence is an awkward man obsessing over a handful of ideas, some of them ridiculously wrong, but one of which will change the world. 

Biblical fake prophets were often preferred to real prophets because they made rulers feel comfortable about the future. The modern technoprophet assures a secular elite that it can effectively control people and that it even has the obligation to do so. It tells them that “science” is on their side.

The easy way to tell real religion from fake religion is that real religion doesn't make you feel good. It doesn't assure you that everything you’re doing is right and that you ought to keep on doing it.