Corrupt persons use religion to justify their sin instead of overcome it. Doing that takes quite a bit of redesigning. This means some quite distinct variations take form, and they are called heresies. It also means there is a test of correctness based upon consistent relationships to the truths which Christ taught.

There are two methods of corrupting religion - the heresy method, which falsifies theological truth, and the opposition method, which uses brute force to steamroll over believers or truth.

In the modern religions, conservatives use the heresy method, and modernists use the brute force method. Both methods fit together hand and glove. The conservatives and modernists are an inch apart on the horizon of religious truth. They both use religion to justify corruption rather than tolerating the truth about it.

The modernists justify the conservatives by producing a list of sins which they call virtue; and the conservatives justify the modernists by claiming that their nihilistic corruption is God's perfect truth.

Conservative Catholics focus on the pope, saying in essence that real Catholicism is attachment to the pope. They get very subjective about the pope relating to him as the equivalent of God.

I think the pope and church authorities should provide moral leadership and set requirements for Catholics, but it should include teaching, not just dictates. If they did significant teaching on morality, they would find out a lot about their own corruptions in the areas of elitism, bigotry and domination.

Supposedly, according to conservatives, God makes popes super beings; but he doesn't. One pope dug up another pope's body twice to condemn him more thoroughly. One or the other of them had to be extremely corrupt—probably both of them.

The way conservatives rationalize that sort of thing is to say that popes are infallible only in religious matters, while their personal lives can be corrupt. But if their infallible morality does not improve their personal lives, there must be some big failures in that version of religion.

In general terms, the problem is that religious authorities including the popes weasel around the relevance of everything, omitting, when not misdefining, the important elements of morality. The purpose is to redesign morality to rationalize corruptions related to the subconscious forces of elitism, bigotry, domination, etc.

The problem then snowballs. To shield themselves from criticism or competition in defining or applying morality, they claim that their result is perfect truth being produced by God, and any alternative, let alone opposition, is sin.

The result is an attempt at mind control, as authoritarians strive for. Supposedly, the dominators can replace the minds of the dominees. It's like chewing another person's food. Even if the dominators were right about everying and they could produce perfect behavior in other persons, it would not improve anyone's moral character without his own control of his own mind. It's how schemes are controlled, not how souls are saved.

One can find most of the relevant truth, except for the most basic elements of it, in Catholicism someplace. But it is usually buried and not applied properly to the corruption that destroys religion and society. It needs to be put into more relevant forms including effective moral criticism and applications. But conservatives and church authorities say that competition with them is sin, and they insulate themselves from it.

The most basic element of all heresy is a pretense of special knowledge, which is gnosticism. Church authorities and conservatives say their knowledge is perfect, since it comes from God, and no one else's is. Therefore, only they can speak for the religion or for God or produce religious truth.

The truth of this subject is not a tit-for-tat dispute over who is right or wrong. The truth was written into the laws of existence, when God created molecules. Molecules define things about human existence. And their temporary purpose demonstrates that humans are supposed to be accomplishing something with them.

A basic element of corrupt theology is an assumption that material existence is an end in itself. The starting assumption is that God was trying to create a utopia (a variant of the garden of Eden), but satan tripped over a vine and created sin, and God hasn't been able to solve the problems.

Conservatives deny all forms of significant change including evolution of truth, moral awareness and religion, besides biological evolution. They want to pretend that everything is in a static state, because only without change can they redirect rationality and human responsibilities away from objective realities and toward their subjectively arbitrated interpretations of God's will.

In other words, if change occurs, there is a responsibility to assure that it is constructive by applying rationality to objective reality. By contrast, conservatives pretend that everything just takes care of itself when it is ignored. A static state is necessary to justify that position.

The point is this: Conservatives assume that religion consists of making a subjective guess at God's will, and that applying rationality to objective reality is atheistic materialism, which is heresy. I'm saying it is the other way around. Christ taught how to apply rationality to objective reality, and subjectivizing the responsibilities is heresy.

It should be apparent in abstract reality that there is a process occurring. The sin and problems are made visible by the molecules. People then become aware of the difference between right and wrong. How come the social standards improved over time? Because moral truth and awareness have been evolving forward. The molecules have no other purpose than evolving morality as truth and awareness.

With that purpose for molecular life, it is erroneous to assume that dominating authorities should be purifying everything. First, how could they succeed, when God's purpose is to allow good and evil to interact? Secondly, what would be accomplished if authoritarians did succeed at purifying anything? Who would be overcoming sin, if someone had everything purified?

It's important to notice the difference between purifying and combating the sin. Purifying is a pretense that could not succeed. Combating sin is a process which yields truth and justice as the valuable but abstract products.

Purifying starts with the pretense that perfect is normal, and corrective measures restore normal to its perfect state. The purpose is to maintain a state of existence which is arranged and controlled by dominating persons. In other words, it's maintaining the status quo.

Heresy by that standard is any threat to the status quo. Dominating persons contrive reality, and attacking it is supposed to be heresy.

When the religion is Christianity, Christ ought to be the one who determines what it consists of. He related morality to objective reality through direct teaching, parables and the examples of life. What he taught was how to overcome sin by developing truth about it. Heresy then is misrepresenting the subject.

The heresies reached their most obvious extreme during the early centuries, before opposing truth was developed. They then got refined to where they merged with corruption in general. The most extreme examples of heresy show what the tactics and standards are.

Gnosticism is the foundation of heresy, because it is a dramatization of how corrupt power is handled. Authoritarians pretend to have esoteric knowledge, which is the essence of gnosticism. An obvious variation of it is selling snake root oil. Some charlatan supposedly knows something about the contents of the bottle which no one else knows. It is insulating realities from rationality that obsesses authoritarians and creates the essence of gnosticism.

Gnosticism involves elitism. It says some minds are superior and qualified to handle certain realities, and other minds are not.

The most open, modern version of heresy is the charismatic movement. Charismatics claim to have special knowledge and powers, such as speaking in tongues and healing the sick, and they want to use their supposed superiority as a basis for taking over the religion. The pretense of knowing something which other persons cannot grasp is gnosticism.