I am not a person who makes orders and expects others to follow them. If applicable, I follow my own advice, and it is often through giving advice to others that I change how I think about something. If you don't know what I'm talking about, disregard this paragraph completely, it's time for business.
Religion.
The scourge of humankind. One of the principal reasons we war against other nations, kill people for no other reason, or even risk our own lives because of some 'divine plan'. In the words of Christopher Hitchens, author of
God is not Great, 'Religion poisons everything', and this is certainly true for so many atrocities in the modern world.
I will not take the obvious example of 9/11, for that is an overused one; nor will I take the crusades, since that is not exactly a modern atrocity, although was nevertheless perpetrated solely on the grounds of religion. I will take some other examples I am sure you are familiar with, but still do demonstrate how terrible religion is to humanity.
Firstly, there is an issue involving certain cartoons. You may already know about this event, but let me explain a little nonetheless. A Danish newspaper publishes a cartoon involving the prophet Mohammed. In it, a bearded asian man is wearing a turban on his head, which has a fuse protruding from the top of it, just like the fuses you see protruding from those black spherical bombs in Looney Toons cartoons. Of course, hell ensues. A Danish embassy is burnt to the ground. Muslims in their thousands protest against just this one small cartoon, marching through London with slogans like 'Behead those who offend Islam' and burning Danish flags.
Over a cartoon. A cartoon intended as nothing more than a joke, and they burn down buildings.
The next issue is another involving Islam, although it is certainly not my intention to ruin the reputation of just that particular religion. This involves a certain reading from the Pope. He was giving a lecture in Rome, in which he quoted some texts from the crusades. These particular texts cited Islam as a religion of violence, and even though the pope gave an official apology for the incident, churches were burnt, a nun was killed, and there were yet more riots on the streets of various cities.
Lastly, a smaller one, involving a certain religious group called the Jehovah's Witnesses. They do not believe in blood transfusions. A bit of a strange thing to not believe in, I will agree, and you may not think this is such a serious issue, but it does cost peoples' lives every single year. People die because they do not take blood at hospital during important operations. It isn't just Jehovah's Witnesses, so many people also believe that if they become ill then it is part of God's divine plan if they die it is because God wanted for them to die. Religion for these people is clearly a serious threat to their health, if not their lives.
And why do people do these things? Because of Religion. Because of beliefs and because they think it is part of a plan of some being who happens to be omnipotent and omniscient (which is, in fact, a contradiction). Because people believe if they follow some clear path of how to live they will be given entrance to some kingdom of heaven during the afterlife.
'We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common, we call them 'religious'; otherwise, they are likely to be called 'mad', 'psychotic' or 'delusional' ... Clearly there is sanity in numbers. And yes, it is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts, when it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window. And so, while religious people are not generally mad, their core beliefs absolutely are.'
Throughout the years, scientific study and reasoning has disproved so many things that were previously assumed to be true by otherwise ignorant society. The big bang, evolution, all of these things - the idea of creationism is considered by many people to be just a complete fallacy. But anything that has contradicted religion has been met with uproar. Even something as simple as the heliocentric model of the solar system got the great astronomer Copernicus put under house arrest. Galileo and Newton as well, they were prevented from presenting their theories because they might possibly have disagreed with religion. The fact faith is expressed as a virtue in the eyes of the church goes even further to show that religion is attempting to crush anything that might come in its way. Perhaps it feels threatened and insecure.
Religion poisons everything.
Discuss.
