Organized Religion and Refusal to Change

I feel like the person that years ago I would of criticized for not knowing the "truth", but it is for that very reason that I am writing this.

Organized religion, I am beginning to believe, is the antithesis of progress.  After saying that incredibly heretical statement, I will admit that I think beliefs are an incredibly part of society and its functions.  However, organized religion add the "mob mentality" to beliefs that is both scary and insufferable in the face of progress.  When so many people gather together at any time in any place, it is an incredibly powerful and yet also incredibly scary thing.

In some ways, there is very little difference between organized religion and organized protests.  Both have large amounts of people gathered together with raised hands in the pursuit of changing the way the world works.  I wonder if it is why I often find myself gravitating towards organized protests.  They have something that make me feel somewhat at home and at peace because they remind me of the comfort I felt in numbers for my beliefs at both church and school.

I don't know if I will go as far as saying organized protests are the antithesis of change.  Mainly because organized protest often come and go with the wind and are often based in the realm and context of current need.  Organized religion is often based in the realm and context of tradition and claimed truth.  This is what scares me about it.  Organized protests are a response to a refusal to change.  Organized religion represents that refusal to change.

This is of course stereotyping all organized religion into one category, but beyond a few very new and emerging churches, I rarely see a humility to grow within the context of an organized group of believers.  I see it in individual believers, but I think it is very rare that in the context of the Organized as a whole there is rarely a humility that they perhaps could be wrong.  That perhaps their long held beliefs could be false or, at the very least, not wholly true.

My counterargument to myself on this is always, "How are you any different?"  I don't know.  Maybe my refusal to change is just as adamant as organized religion's.