A common criticism I get...

A common criticism I get about my apparent vocal and flagarant religion bashing is that religion is not the main problem. All the horrible things happening would happen anyway because of the situations people are in or because people are just violent, and on and on and on.

This is true, but it misses a very important problem: religion IS the cause of much more than it gets credit for.

South Park got it right in their "Go God Go!" set of episodes when Eric "Time Child" Cartmen went into the future, a future composed entirely of atheists who were waging a horrible world war sparked by differences in opinion about what name organized atheists ought to call themselves--well that, and who gets Hawaii.

I am under no delusions that religion is the MAIN source of the world's problems. But my criticizers are under the horribly inaccurate delusion that religion is not the cause of any of the problems.

The reason I attack not just religion, but belief in god at all, and faith as a somehow virtuous doctrine, is because of the harm that it does do, and because of the harm which is done in its name. I promise that I do understand that most of the evils would be committed anyway, but that's one of my points--I want to strip away the false pretense of religion so that evils are shown for what they are.

Many evils go unnoticed because they disguise themselves in religious ritual or morality.

The Middle East might still be in conflict without religion. Good people would still be going to Africa to give out food and help heal the sick. Parents in Texas would still fight over how to educate their children.

What would not happen without religion however is that Sharia law would not be allowed in Britain because it's a religious right. The good people in Africa would not propagate the spread of AIDS because they preach to teenagers that while premarital sex is bad, condoms are far worse. The parents in Texas who want to teach fairy tales in the bio9logy classroom would not have any pretext for getting a foothold for their craziness.

From this site

In the 1300s, the Aztecs would make human sacrifices to the Sun god.

Hearts of sacrifice victims were cut out, and some bodies were eaten ceremoniously. Other victims were drowned, beheaded, burned or dropped from heights. In a rite to the rain god, shrieking children were killed at several sites so that their tears might induce rain. In a rite to the maize goddess, a virgin danced for 24 hours, then was killed and skinned; her skin was worn by a priest in further dancing. One account says that at King Ahuitzotl’s coronation, 80,000 prisoners were butchered to please the gods.

And...

When Puritans settled in Massachusetts in the 1600s, they created a religious police state where doctrinal deviation could lead to flogging, pillorying, hanging, cutting off ears, or boring through the tongue with a hot iron. Preaching Quaker beliefs was a capital offense. Four stubborn Quakers defied this law and were hanged. In the 1690s fear of witches seized the colony. Twenty alleged witches were killed and 150 others imprisoned.


Most people see the above quotes and think that that doesn't happen any more--we know enough about how the world works to not resort to these horrid rituals. Well those people are half right... we do know enough now to not need to do horrible things because we just don't know what else to do in order to get rain or make our crops come up full. But disgusting crap like that STILL GOES ON IN THE WORLD TODAY.

Once we strip away the protective cloak of religion, we can see many things for what they are. Here are a few harmful things done only in the name of religion (and even non-religious personal belief) and which could not possibly have been done otherwise:

1. Genital mutilation as a common practice and commitment to spirituality (as opposed to a possible medical benefit)
2. Rampant antisemitism in Western "liberal" countries
3. Telling teens in AIDS-ridden Africa not to use condoms
4. Telling school children blatant inaccuracies about biology, geology, history, astronomy, physics, and chemistry because it contradicts a book you like
5. Human sacrifice--not bad people or people you are at war with, but people you love specifically for the purpose of having better fortune

Also, there is often a logical fallacy of my critics which I would like to briefly point out: If you claim that religion does a lot of good, you MUST concede that it does bad as well. If you claim that religion does good, you are implicitly saying is does some form of good which could not otherwise have been done. So you must admit that either religion is unnecessary in order to do good, or you must take responsibility for the bad it does in its name as well. I would like to put forward a question Christopher Hitches came up with, which succinctly makes the point: Can you name a moral action taken, or a moral statement made, by a believer that could not have been made by an atheist?

What about an immoral action or statement?

Game, set, match.

So please stop telling me that religion plays not part. I understand that there are other forces at work and that people will always find ways to fight. But don't tell me that teaching them to believe condoms are evil has no consequences at all. Don't tell me that every now and then an otherwise good and tolerant person doesn't develop a dislike of gays or Jews because he was taught they are evil or wrong. Don't tell me that in this modern day and age, adulterers would still be stoned if believing myths wasn't encouraged.

It all happens. And it happens directly as a result of not just organized religion, but faith itself. Once you convince yourself that believing things which you cannot possibly know is acceptable and a path towards some form of knowledge, you open the door for all kinds of nonsense, both good and bad to enter. The reason I argue against religion and belief is because I want to close that door. I want to enable people to tell right from wrong, because many of them simply can't do that--and we let them get away with it under the guise of political correctness and tolerance. So I will continue to point out errors in logic and beliefs which have no basis, because otherwise people will continue to do things -- right and wrong -- for the wrong reasons, and it is important that we as a society strip away the cloak of irrationality in order to move forward and teach people to do good for the sake of doing good in and of itself, and we teach them not to do bad things that they THINK are good because they believe crazy shit.

In the words of Steven Weinberg: With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion.


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