The exploitation of human needs (with note)

When humans are trying to make contact with their dead they become vulnerable to exploitation. "Contact" cannot be proved but can be faked so clairvoyants can make money by offering something that people are so desperate to have that they will be unconsciously complicit in the deception. The need they feel reduces their critical engagement. Something similar happens with religion, people feel an urgent need to interact with God, to receive his approval and benefit from his blessing. To step between humanity and their creator and take a payment in the form of control, power, influence or actual cash under the pretence of being able to facilitate that relationship is a risk that could only be taken by a person who either does not believe in Gods existence or does not believe that He is actually what he claims to be, or what his worshippers believe Him to be. Religions that exploit their followers based on this contradictory dynamic cannot legitimately claim to represent the interests of God or of His worshippers. Just as the clients of a clairvoyant can protect themselves against being exploited by having a healthy skepticism about what they are being offered and by being informed about the actual condition of the dead, people looking to interact with their Creator can protect themselves from bad religion by keeping their critical faculties actively involved and having the courage to call out the fraudulent agent when it becomes apparent. 

Investigation of the facts leads me to the conclusion that the dead cannot be contacted so I will not be wasting my emotional energy or my money trying to contact them. The case is not so simple with religion, a hypothetical agency the purpose of which is to facilitate a dialogue between us and our God without cynically plundering our resources is possible. In truth most religion has functioned as a way of controlling and exploiting society through its need to interact with and supplicate the unknown. However it is not logical or realistic to assume that because all structures in human society are imperfect they are, by default, untrustworthy. Two quantities are also relevant, goodwill and integrity, personally we can admit to being imperfect while having both these is possible in the individual, it is also possible for an organisation. The question remains, whether the functions that such an organisation has to offer are essential to the individual's relationship with their creator. That worshippers should form a community is inevitable, that they should organise themselves to achieve community objectives is also inevitable. Hierarchy and, worse, patriarchy are the natural enemies of the purity of such an organically developed organisation. They will poison the dynamic because they introduce the concept of inequality so that the individual becomes aware of their relative importance within their community and this impacts on their understanding of their relationship with God.

Clarification: when I discuss "hierarchy" I am not talking about infrastructure and positions of responsibility. Hierarchy, to me, is an authority structure where the concept of individual worth has been  distorted by confusing the concept of authority with the concept of power.