The Problem with Religion

I have isolated six major issues with religion (there may be more but upon writing this, I had six in mind). These six issues hurt any religion in which they exists. They are listed below:

Sanctimoniousness. Fundamentalists for some reason believe that they are divinely inspired and that everyone should follow them or they won't be saved and accepted by the grace of God. Their views are the only possible correct views. As such, they push their views on everyone else and try to force everyone to conform to these view points.

Look at gay rights. The religious right is so concerned over how two consenting adults act in the privacy of their own rooms. They believe that since the Bible declares homosexuality to be an abomination (Leviticus), they have the right to tell the gays how to live. Somehow, they have authority over other people.

This does not work in a free society because of the diversity of religions. People may believe in different ethical codes and as such, any authority must base their codes from values that transcend religion (Obama made a speech about this.) Authority from god is not an acceptable source of authority in a free society unless that authority can be applied to everyone, including non-believers. Which god is the right god?

The religious right do not have any authority on how to tell me how to live or behave.

Fanaticism. Most religions have fanatics within who take religions ecstasy to an extreme. Look at Islam. How many people have been killed by fanatics who strap themselves to bombs for a hypothetical heaven? It is revolting. But fanaticism isn't only violence. It is also fundamentalism and the refusal to compromise any belief for any rationality. Fred Phelps is a religious fanatic. He doesn't kill anyone, but he refuses to accept that what he does is immoral because he believes so strongly in it. Fanaticism leads to irrational, and often violent behavior, that does nothing but turn rational people away from religions.

Blind Faith. The most amazing sin of religion is blind faith. We are expected to believe, on the words of an old man at a pulpit or the words of a 5000 year old book, that there is some god out there meddling in human affairs. But we are given no basis of proof. No rational reason as to why we should accept these things as fact. But we are told to believe anyways. We are told to question our faith, but at the same time, we are told to believe in god and how to believe in god. And no rationality is given other than emotional experience and unexplained phenomenon. There is nothing that concretely states that there is a god, that Mohamed was inspired by Gabriel, that Jesus was divine, etc, etc. We are simply suppose to believe it.

This leads to a lack of critical thinking. If people are brought up to believe in a god because some authority told them to, how can we teach them to question the actions of authority figures?

Superstition. The world is still only six thousand years old in the minds of millions of people. A mountain of evidence, hundreds of thousands of scientific journals all support Darwin's theory of evolution and yet Creationism still lives. In fact, it lives so much that some states in the US, especially in the Bible Belt, are trying to push Creationism into a science class.

Superstition is the belief in supernatural phenomenon. All religions have some superstition. But superstition is faulty. Typically, supernatural acts are only supernatural due to being unexplained by science or by merely being coincidence. Something unexplained by science isn't supernatural, it simply means science doesn't yet have a working theory on that. There wasn't always a theory of gravity, for example. It doesn't mean that five thousand years ago, gravity was a supernatural phenomenon, it just meant no one could explain it. And being coincidental doesn't mean anything either. Correlation is not causation. Imagine that I pray to a milk jug for twenty million dollars and then I go and win millions in the lottery. Did the milk jug have anything to do with my winning the lottery?

Superstition leads to blind faith and belief in irrational statements because one refuses to accept that superstition is silly and irrational. It rejects empirical evidence in favor of faith-based "evidence" which isn't evidence at all.

Stubbornness. Religion is stubborn. It took the Roman Catholic church almost 500 years to apologize to Galileo. When something occurs, such as the theory of evolution, religion resists the tides of change furiously, to the point of recklessness. Religions refuse to adapt. In the Middle East, Islamics are still trying to impose 12th century values and laws (Sharia) on nations, laws that have long since been regarded as human rights violations. But the fundamentalists refuse to see this, it may make them recognize that their religion is faulty and they might have to think rationally. But it is easier to stupidly hold on to some values and drag a society down with you rather than to progress. The Catholic church is doing a little better these days. They have accepted Evolution and came to a compromise between genesis and science. But most baptist churches are still pulling back. Its a wonder that South baptist churches have accepted the round earth theory. Islam, unfortunately, is even further back in time than fundamentalist Christianity. To point this out, just a few weeks ago in Afghanistan, a Muslim was on trial for translating the Koran from Arabic to Farsi. Fundamentalists cried out that he be beheaded for such a dreadful act. Christianity hasn't executed someone for translating the bible for 400 years.

Biblical Buffet. The religious right in the US enjoys quoting Leviticus where it states that a man who lies with another man, as if he is a woman, is an abomination, shall be put to death. When they do this, I wonder, do they eat shrimp? Same book, different chapter. Leviticus has a load of dietary laws. Don't eat shrimp, shellfish, pigs, some birds, etc, etc. So, do any religious nuts who argue profusely against gay rights, argue against the consumption of shrimp and shellfish? It is a biblical buffet. They point out which passages are relevant to their interests and ignore ones that are irrelevant. I wonder if religious righties also beat their wives and children when they disobey. This is also in the Bible.

If you accept the bible as an authority, you can't pick and chose passages at whim.


Modern religions would do much better and garner larger and more accepting audiences if they would work harder at avoiding these six issues. If religion cannot compromise and fix these issues, religion might be gone in a century or two.

"Rawr" - some bear in the forest.

J Kuhl Signing Off