Wednesday, March 28, 2007

What Are The Worst Things About Religion?

1. Its substitution of reasoning and evidence with blind faith.

2. Its substitution of curiosity, open-mindedness, and critical thinking with forever-immutable and often-dubious "facts". Not only does this retard discovery, but it is also a dull existence.

3. Its encouragement of tribalism (although, admittedly, the absence of religion would probably result in tribalism based on other things).

4. Its providing adherents with a self-defined moral cover to harm others, from imposing restrictions on medical research to flying planes into skyscrapers -- let alone the harm done to children along the entire spectrum from bar-mitzvahs, to scaring them with stories about "hell", to female genital mutilation.

5. Its providing adherents with license to prohibit any discussion of behavior derived from their beliefs. From loud public displays of evangelism, to the "right" to go home early on Fridays, to the "right" to not touch pork in your supermarket job that you voluntarily accepted, to the public broadcasting of religious services, to the "right" to terrorize airplane passengers, any refusal to accommodate religious demands is interpreted as an attack on "constitutional rights".

Otherwise, no problem.

1 comment:

Lexcen said...

Religion also prevents open mindedness, it forbids certain questions from being asked and prevents the search for knowledge from advancing. Religion lives in fear of science because science negates much of what is taken as literal truth in religion. Religion creates a sense of guilt that doesn't need to exist and cripples human happiness because of that guilt. Religion teaches fatalism. Religion puts human beings on a higher plane to all other species and falsely assumes that humans are special creation that can mistreat other species with contempt. Religion could be indirectly responsible for the ecological disasters created by man on the planet because of this arrogance of believing humans are a special species.