Originally Posted by
Taunton Blue Genie
Thanks for your measured and polite reply. My perspective is this:
We, as human being, have been gifted the power of intellect and it's about time that we grew up and applied critical analysis to everything we are told. We should not be encouraged to remain in a childlike state and believe that tomes are the word of a deity. All book and collections thereof have been written by man/men and what is stated is fact simply isn't.
Virgin births, talking snakes, dieties with goat or elephant heads, gods with multiple limbs, the notion of an afterlife, miracles, the world resting on tortoises, devils, demons etc etc.
Many educated people in the past have been vilified, tortured and disenfranchised as a result of explaining away natural phenomena with science (aka knowledge) and to this day billions of people are controlled or influenced by the religion that was passed on to them as a child.
What they eat, what they wear, what they can't do on certain days and how their religion is the only true one, that non-believers in their particular religion will not reach heaven/paradise/the afterlife. Many religions foster an 'us and them' mentality between their followers and those who aren't. Evolution is still disputed by many religious authorities when mankind has the intellect to send man to the moon and zap some cancers using scientific technology built on some of the knowledge that scientists like Galileo and Copernicus were punished for. Intolerance of homosexuality abounds in many religions and among some political political parties close to them - and religious movements tend to be dominated by men (Popes, bishops, Dalai Lamas, vicars, Buddhist priests etc) and women are often discriminated against and not permitted to share space with men in many circumstances.
Religions are essentially folklore passed of as truth - and I'm afraid that indoctrinating children with a religion has a great foothold over them when they are formulating their view of the world. It's called indoctrination, of course.
Religions by their very nature are an example of schism upon schism. You only have to see the incredible amount of flavours of Abrahamism, which itself based many of its stories on previous religions. Religions are largely about unknown men who wrote down things centuries ago and in an age where the average person did not understand much about what their masters foisted on them as being created by deities and spirits. So-called 'holy books' are often collections that have been chopped and changed throughout the centuries by religious authorities and different compilations have been adopted by different schisms of the same overarching religion. (The latter situation seems to be so little known by many believers). Even the main characters are assigned different levels of importance when one compares one collection with another. It all points to the fact that religion is man-made and that there is absolutely zero evidence of deities.
Stories of miracles are mentioned in various tomes but they seem to be sadly lacking in this age where we would know about them. No deity intervened during the holocaust but the victims of that despicable part of history were indoctrinated to believe in their forbears being able to cross the Red Sea, which parted for them.
By the way, it is interesting to hear of believers of various religions now trying to explain that some of the stories in their holy books merely being allegories, This is a very new phenomenon for me as I attended various schools and churches as a boy, and no-one ever conveyed Bible stories as anything other that fact. And even my very good friend, who is a lay preacher, has experienced schisms in churches he preached in - as some clergyman in the same building believe the Bible to be literal truth and others don't. I think those who are in the 'allegory camp' have a problem in that it must be very complicated in where they choose to draw the line between fact and fiction.
My case against religion (and I know that it has some positive sides) is that encourages infantilism, ignorance, parochialism,fantasy and false hope.
It divides people and deters them from critical thought. It stops many people doing things that have no detrimental effect on anyone or anything. It often denies science and intellectual enlightenment
For me, there is no substitute for overarching altruism, critical thinking and not being controlled in anyway by primitive dogmas determined by men in centuries past.
For me, religion is an insult to one's intelligence.