There's No Place Like Home

Man, I’m wound up today.

The reply I got to my last rant was quite polite and pleasant. But this part I couldn’t let stand:

Why expend energy fighting against religion as a whole. As with most things in our society, 99% of its good, or at least harmless. Battle the creeps, the thieves, the molesters, and let the rest of them be happy in their beliefs.

This was my reponse:

Warning, this post is an 11 on the rant-o-meter.

I’m sorry, I have to take exception with this. This is wrong thinking. I don’t doubt that your church does good work. I don’t doubt that many churches do good work. Even the churches who do bad things do good work.

But religion, in general, has caused more problems than it has solved.

Christianity is based on a work of fiction penned over 2000 years ago. It is incoherent and contradicts itself. And yet people believe that it is the literial truth. They believe in these things with no proof.

This is the definition of irrationality.

However, it is not just Christianity that I have issues with. All religions are problematic.

Among the issues that mainstream religion (in the US) is against are:

• Reproductive rights for women.
• Civil rights for gays and lesbians.
• The teaching of sex education in schools.
• The teaching of good science in schools (can you say Intelligent Design – a re-badging of Creationism?)
• Medical research that can save and enhance lives.

These are the things that religion has given us in the past:

• The Crusades
• The Spanish Inquistion
• Pogroms
• Fatwas against people for offending the religion (Salmon Rushdi)
• Riots in the streets (with deaths) because of a series of cartoons!
• The blowing up of abortion clinics (and clinics that don’t perform abortion, but the person thought they did)
• The killing of Doctors that perform abortion

Many of the current problems in the world are caused by religion:

• The fighting between Israel and Palestine
• The fighting between India and Pakistan
• The fighting between the Shiites and the Sunis in Iraq
• Suicide Bombers

And in things that hit closer to home, religion gives us:

• The non-alcohol-carrying taxi drivers
• The non-pork-scanning checkout clerk
• The non-birth control-dispensing pharmacist
• The bus driver who doesn’t want to drive the bus with the ad for a magazine for gays on it
• The people who protest against gays at funerals
• Nut-bag politicians who proclaim that they are “a fool for Jeebus” (Michelle Bachman) I don’t know about you, but I don’t want any kind of a fool representing me.
• A President of this country who believes that he talks to God and God tells him what to do. (No, I am not making this up – Google it.)

I am not advocating that we vanish all religion instantly. But people who go out and do things (good or bad) just because their preacher, mullah, bishop, bible, etc. told them to, without weighing what they are told against what they can see with their own eyes, cause much of the conflict in this world.

Faith is irrational. Faith is the belief in things that you can not prove. The belief in things for which there is no evidence. Faith causes people to do irrational things.

The Sucide Bomber is driven by a faith that he will end up in a better world when he dies. Is this a rational belief?

Catholics believe that confession absolves them of all sins. That all will be okay as long as they tell their priest the bad things they have done and they perform their absolutions. They can sin, that’s okay, as long as they do pennance. But if they don’t do the pennance, they will burn in hell for eternity. Is this a rational belief?

The bible tells us that the earth was created in 7 days. Yet science indicates that the earth is millions of years old. So religious people take many different tacks to try and explain this:

• There are the people who whole-heartedly believe that the earth was created in 7 days. They also believe that the earth is only around 6000 years old and that science is a lie. Fossils were planted by God as a test of our faith. Is this a rational belief?
• There are the people who try and explain it away by saying that each day is millions of years. This is a more rational belief, but still.
• There are people who try and say that Genesis is just a creation myth story, but the rest of the bible is literial truth. As a matter of fact, many religions ‘cherry pick’ the bible for what they feel is ‘Gods Law’. Is this a rational belief?

Almost all religions believe that there is a big, invisible Sky Daddy who watches everything you do and judges you. Most also believe that he controls everything that happens on earth. You can pray to him to try and influence what he does, and he might listen, but mostly not. Is this a rational belief?

The Jews don’t eat pork. They keep Kosher (different pans for meat and dairy.) These actions are all based on religious laws. Yet non-Jews eat pork and don’t die. We eat dairy and meat together and don’t die. Are these rational beliefs?

Man, this is turning into another long-winded rant, but this is obviously something that I feel strongly about.