Religion is Bad for Society

It is, more often than not, greatly offensive when you challenge someone’s religion. It’s generally regarded as taboo, and most people shy away from the subject. But religion is a discourse that as a society we must participate in. It is precisely this belief, in the unsupported claim of a God that is threatening our society as a whole. It suppresses logic and critical thinking by ignoring science. It has been and continues to be an extreme source of violence and hatred between humans. It uses threats, like hell, to ensure people act a certain way and adhere to archaic principles which cause little, if any, advancement in society.

If a scientist has a theory, and that theory is disproven, he doesn’t get angry and defend his theory at all costs. He doesn’t make excuses and accept his theory on faith, because that’s the only way to make sense of it all. What he does, is accepts that what he originally thought was true is indeed false, because he is looking for truth. If truth is something that religion claims to perpetuate, isn’t it interesting that science, logic, and facts have no basis in its claims.

In a 2005 United Nations Report, a ‘Secularization Theory’ emerged that caught the church scrambling for an answer. It found that the happiest, most developed countries in the world were the least religious. It also found that as religion declines, society advances. Places like Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland were on the top of the United Nations list as the best countries in which to live. They were also the least religious. Some even called them, “The most successful societies the world has ever known.” (The Guardian, 2005 Oct 25) These countries were forerunners in things such as gender equality, and also boast one of the highest life expectancy rates in the world. Sweden, for example, is one of the most economically competitive countries. Its government has long since recognized same-sex marriage, and has the best ‘high-literacy’ rate in the world. Denmark ranked highest in the moral issues that were surveyed in the report, and is one of the best countries toward the environment. Both of these countries are among the most generous in providing aid to third world countries. (United Nations Human Development Report, 2005) While this is not an end-all definitive conclusion that religion does us no good, it is interesting, and should at least begin a dialogue.

Religion has been with us for centuries. If you lived during the Viking Age, you would have most likely believed in Thor, the god of thunder, a war god. If you’d lived in Greece during 700 BC it was Zeus, a sky god. If you lived now in Iraq you would most likely believe in Allah.
Consequently, living in the United States, you most likely believe in Jesus. I would submit to you this: All these gods claim to have a monopoly on salvation with absolutely no proof that they ever even existed. Each society that claims these religious pretenses have committed murderous atrocities, and have done little to advance society, science, or knowledge in general. In fact, religion subdues knowledge even in its most basic form.

According to a recent Gallup poll (Gallup, 2004), only 12% of Americans believe life on earth developed through a natural process without the hand of a god, and 31% believe evolution was guided by God. This is a scary statistic when there are few examples in nature of intelligent design, yet so many examples of unintelligent design. This same poll revealed that 53% of American’s are Creationists. This means they take the book of Genesis, which supposedly tells us how the world began, at a literal translation. Even after a thousand years of scientific study which have proven how old the first forms of life were, and how much older the earth is, most of your neighbors actually believe the entire universe was created only six thousand years ago. This is one example of when religion starts to get very dangerous.

To literally believe your holy book is correct, no matter what religion you subscribe to, is to completely ignore scientific fact. And, while you may think this just makes a person blissfully naive and is no real cause for alarm, I would suggest you think back to our last President, George W. Bush, who said that as far as evolution is concerned, “the jury is still out.” Scientifically, this is intellectual bankruptcy. We hold countless indisputable fossil records which prove the theory of evolution. Our President, the Commander-In-Chief, was a Creationist. This means he takes the Bible literally. Most people who take the Bible literally believe that in the next 50 years, the world will end. Sam Harris put it best when he wrote, “Imagine the consequences that any significant component of the US government actually believed that the world was about to end, and that it’s ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half the American population apparently believes this purely on the basis of religious dogma should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency. 45% of us think that Jesus is going to come back in the next 50 years. This is a shocking belief that’s incompatible with finding any motive in creating a durable future for our species or a sustainable civilization – geo-politically, economically, or environmentally. If you think the world is going to end in 50 years, and its ending is going to be the best thing that could possibly happen, that is a bad piece of software to be running if you have to make decisions about things like nuclear first strike policy.” (Harris, Sam)

Let’s look at it from a medical standpoint. If everyone believed that ‘everything happens for a reason,’ and that God was in control, what motivation would we have to make advances in medicine? Why would we make things like vaccines, or spend money trying to find cures for diseases like AIDS, and cancer. According to the Catholic Church, even a simple medical measure, like birth control, is wrong. The Catholic Church’s official position is that condom use to prevent AIDS, even from one married partner to another is forbidden. On the church’s behalf missionaries go to Africa, and preach that the use of condoms is sinful. They do this in a country that experienced 605,480 deaths from AIDS in 2006. (South Africa: HIV & AIDS Statistics 2007)

Stem cell research is one of the most promising lines in Biology to generate medical therapies. President Bush vetoed a bill that would allow stem cell research because he found it morally reprehensible, and Biblically incompatible. This means that he believed a three day old blastocyst, in a petri dish, had a soul. And the life of that three day old collection of cells was more important than finding a cure for cancer which would no doubt save millions of lives. All this was because of his religion. Biblically speaking, if you go through the Bible and add up all the first born-children that God either killed, or commanded to be killed, he is the most prolific abortionist of all.

Of course, violence is no stranger to the Bible. The Old Testament is full of slaughter. A rough estimation of how many people God killed falls at about 34,682,212. (How Many Has God Killed, Jan 2009) If you believe the Bible is a historically accurate account of God’s teachings and actions, then it is the most genocidal account of history on record.

Richard Dawkins wrote, “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” (Dawkins, Richard)

It should come as no surprise to us, then, that so much violence is carried out in the name of God around the world. Historically we could point to the Inquisition and Crusades, but even today we are still killing each other in the name of God, or because others morals don’t coincide with the morals of their faith. Palestine: Jews versus Muslims, Northern Ireland: Protestants versus Catholics, Sudan: Muslims versus Christians, Nigeria: Muslims Versus Christians, Ethiopia: Muslims versus Christians, Sri Lanka: Buddhists versus Hindu’s, Iran and Iraq: Shiite versus Sunni Muslims; these are just a few recent cases. (Letter to a Christian Nation, 2008) And I don’t have to remind anyone why airplanes were flown into the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

Religion has done some wonderful things for society, and I have no doubt that it makes some people better than what they thought they could be. I will point out, though, that there are many secular organizations that do just as much good for society, and so religion is not necessary to carry out good in the world.

In my opinion, the most destructive teaching of religion is the teaching that you are not enough, that there has to be some benevolent entity to make your life important, to make it worthwhile, to give you meaning. I would contend just the opposite. If there is some sort of benevolent dictator, then your life means nothing more than whatever he deems fit to make it mean.
It is amazing that you and I are here, on this earth today. Of all the ways it could have gone, and all the incredible possibilities this universe holds, we are still here, breathing, and thinking, and living. Richard Dawkins wrote, "We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here." (Dawkins, Richard, 1998)

So I submit to you this: Religion is as harmful and unnecessary as it is unproven. But it doesn’t mean your life doesn’t have meaning. In fact, the freedom from religion gives your life the greatest meaning. This is it – this is our time, this is our only time. And, we were lucky enough to have the opportunity to live, to breathe, to experience joy, and love, and peace, and pain, and sadness, and kindness. What better reason than this to treat others with the highest amount of respect, with dignity. What better reason to value the sacredness of human life, to help others, to be generous, to be compassionate.

The Bible is both literally and historically contradictory, and is the only book in all of history that even makes mention of a man named Jesus. The teachings at its core are violent, and intolerant, as are other religious texts. It suppresses science and reason. The goodness that’s in the Bible, you can already find in yourself. Trust yourself; believe in yourself. You’re all that you need.
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