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Religions are trojan horses which conceal profoundly strange psychopathy strains. The sheer fear of death has been the main engine of religions for a long time.- J.G. Ballard
I do not find in Christanity one redeeming feature. It is founded on fables and mythology- Thomas Jefferson.
Religion is poison because it asks us to give up our most precious faculty, which is that of reason, and to believe things without evidence. It then asks us to respect this, which it calls faith-Christopher Hitchens
The problem with religion, because it’s been sheltered from criticism, is that it allows people to believe en masse what only idiots or lunatics could believe in isolation.- Sam Harris.
Mark Twain wrote- “Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool”. An appropriate comment, given the laissez-faire of contemporary religion. Misogyny and chauvinism, human rights violation and racism, genocide and terrorism, all in the name of religion. Religion and its God, in effect, is providing the license, the privilege, the entitlement even, to malevolent people for their malevolent intents. The religious God is our master, our king, our ruler; we are his slaves and subjects, fearful and obeisant in trepidation. So servile and duty bound we are, that we righteously suppress, discriminate and kill, all to please and gain favour of this all- controlling master.
God may or may not exist, but this man-made personality of God certainly does. It exists only to justify man’s own fears and powerlessness. It exists also to authorize his pursuit of the inverse of that: strength and empowerment. Meaning, he feels powerless in the face of life’s vagaries and so a fabricated caricature of ‘God’ enters as a stand-in. This stand-in does what man wishes he could have done if he had been powerful. In fact, this God’s powers are what man decides ‘powers’ ought to be! No wonder this God orders racial genocides, oppressive patriarchy and discrimination.
That is a very human pursuit for power and control!
In its present avatar, religion cannot defend itself with its own tools. It can only self -sabotage and fall flat on its face. The anathema of religion is its vague, ill defined, nebulous structure. Banal platitudes, empty consolations and exhausted sermonizing. The human mind craves a coherent framework, a connected train of ideas. Contemporary religion provides none of that in the least. Atheism has arisen newly, with a strong militant personality, because the earnest, valid queries of life have been met far too long now, with empty platitudes. Pedestrian and Stale.
“God is most moral, most just, most loving, most compassionate“. What is that ‘most’, what does it look like?
Or that “God made us in his own image and put value in us”. What does that sentence mean? Define that value.
Devotion to God is the duty of humankind. But why and how? When both duty and God are ill defined, you can hardly establish a connect with most people. What kind of duty, to what end?
These answers do not engage the emotions nor the logic of most people. At least not mine, and for many others who couldn’t care less about traditions.
However, in all seriousness, why did religion take birth? The most popular position, brandished by scientists, and espoused by seemingly intelligent people, is that ‘God’ is a proxy for YET unsolved scientific problems. That once science has advanced further to unravel the workings of nature, ‘God’ will be totally replaced by the laws of physics. Is that true?
Contrary to logical expectations, religion has stubbornly persisted through millennia, sprouting in myriad hydra-headed forms. It’s alive even now, in spite of the establishment of the most rational, scientific, worldview ever. Why? Simply because the benevolence of science has not yet fully penetrated the whole of humanity? Does a significant chunk of human kind still need scientific rehabilitation?
Or else, is there an intrinsic, organic need for religion in human life? What does a religious God contribute in our lives, why is he required?
The motivations for religious belief, at least for the religion we experience today, are actually cloaked, camouflaged psychological needs. Unknowingly deceptive. What are they?
It is another matter that motivations for a religious impulse can be genuine and natural as well. It is another story, not fitting into the narrative of organised religion at all.
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