Unfortunately it has come to be an integral part of the process by which humans label themselves, to be identified with one or another religious group. Whatever positive contributions organized religions may have made to the advocacy of orderly behavior - and this is still debatable - it is no less true that they have also wrought irreparable harm by furthering parochialism and intolerance of others.
The process of assimilation need not be accompanied by any obligation to adopt a badge or symbol of any kind, nor to continue to wear a Jew-identifying family name that was pinned on their ancestors by the dominant members of the Pecking Order, a few generations ago in some European or Middle Eastern ghetto.
In order to participate in a "culture" of one's own, neither should he be obliged to buy the whole package of folklore, fears, superstitions, taboos and rituals that constitute the trappings of formal religion. Just because one's ancestors chose to do so in a primitive agrarian world that long ago became irrelevant, that should not provide an ongoing reason for behavior that is totally inconsistent with a modern culture that purports to esteem human rationality.
Yet, out of our infantile concern about offending, or even being rejected by those elders or peers in whose personal psychological ghettos our formative years had to be spent, we continue to tattoo these same artificial labels and values on our own children; generation after grieving generation. We never pause to contemplate - until after it is too late - that by doing so we are consigning them to the same bloody and tear-filled destiny that has been the only lot of their ancestors.
By the time a child has burned his fingers on a hot stove for the second time, good sense should have taught him that he has been doing something that is terribly wrong; unless, of course, he suffers from the aberration of actually enjoying pain. However, once the inevitability and frequency of such painful stimuli can no longer be denied, for any individual or group to continue to follow the same path, is to invite serious consideration of whether or not a psychopathological state exists.
Once this deadly baggage has been left behind, however, one can deal intelligently with more rational and relevant concerns. High on the list of these, of course, are the obligations to preserve one's own gene pool, and to contemplate the destiny of spaceship Earth in the light of growing concerns about over-population, over-consumption, and the rapid despoilation of our teeming and fragile planet. If, by this late date, organized religion has still not provided any real answers to these more pressing problems, or put into place an intelligence-based system of orderly behavior among humans, how can it possibly be any more effective in preventing a planet-wide Holocaust, than it has been in preventing - or even moderating - the earlier limited versions?
One need not forsake the idea of a God because of a decision to assimilate. God is generic - religion is simply the higher-priced brand name. If one wishes to pay his respects to a personal God, he should not be obliged to filter that devotion through the incantations, taboos, totems, amulets, or paid clergy or any religion. Proper reverence for a supreme intelligence capable of establishing the order of the universe can be shown by adherence to almost any ethical philosophy, no less effectively than through a proprietary creed that is based heavily on the passing of a collection plate.
