Galvanic Ink

I won’t sugar-coat this. I despise religion. I don’t have any problem with people who have faith or who practice religion on their own terms, but I have nothing but contempt for religious organizations. I don’t subscribe to the existence of good vs evil, so I wouldn’t claim that it is an evil practice. However, if you could show me the most vile and despicable villains in any work of fiction on the planet, I would submit to you that organized religion and most religious beliefs are far worse.

The indoctrination of children. The oppression of women. The encouragement of violence and ridicule toward those who are different. I won’t go so far as to point out the atrocities committed by the individuals within the organizations (televangelists, child abusers, etc.), because these are acts committed by people. This post is not about the people, but about the organization itself.

Religion is tyranny, plain and simple. It is a power which claims to exist from a supernatural standpoint. According to it, we cannot stand up to the supernatural entities, so we must accept everything it does without question. When a power insists that it is not to be questioned, then it is free to do what it wants, even if what it wants is inhumane. This is tyranny.

The desires of religion shift depending on who is in charge. This simple fact, alone, should expose us to the fallibility of the organization. If Pope 1 can say that homosexuality is worth an eternity in hell, and Pope 13 can say that it’s not… and we’re supposed to believe that the pope is the literal voice of God… did God change it’s mind? God is supposed to be all knowing and all powerful. It can see all time, past, present and future at once. So how is it even conceivable that such an entity can be presented with new information that allows it to change it’s stance on a subject?

Every religious organization seems to lose it’s own footing depending on who’s talking. Christians, Jews and other organizations don’t follow Catholicism, yet a lot of them seem to revere the Pope when he speaks. That’s like if all Burger King employees revered the CEO of McDonalds. They’re technically in the same industry, but they have nothing to do with one another.

But these are just pet peeves. Let’s dig in deeper. Religion encourages people to ignore logic and reasoning. It tells people that if you attempt to learn and believe anything that isn’t taught from the standpoint of faith, you are doing the Devil’s work. Every scientific achievement which has saved countless lives over generations is viewed as ungodly (that is, until the religious people can benefit from it).

I believe that money rules our lives far more intrusively than it should, yet religion actively takes what little people have to survive and puts it toward their own organization’s growth. It condemns people for not having enough resources to give to it. It pays nothing in taxes and whenever it pretends to do something nice for the community such as a fundraiser for a cause, it takes the lion’s share of the proceeds and keeps them for itself.

It teaches children that they must act a certain way otherwise, when they die, they will be put into a place full of the greatest torments imaginable. People will be tortured, burned and enslaved by demons all day, every day for the rest of eternity. What could their crime be to cause this? Cheating on their spouse? Taking God’s name in vein?

If it’s considered child abuse to spank your kid with the belt for misbehaving, then certainly telling them that they will be tortured for eternity if they misbehave is a threat that qualifies as emotional abuse. But, not only do they do this, but they encourage children to openly hate and berate others. They even encourage children to become racist. The story of the tower of Babel is a perfect example of this: Children are taught that people aren’t just born different, but that their difference is a punishment from God.

Religions have entire tomes on the proper way for a woman to act in subservience toward her husband, but nothing on how she can be seen as an equal. Women are accused of being worthless if they aren’t a virgin before marriage. Women are viewed as unclean if they dare to have menstruation. According to religion, a woman’s only role is to help prop up a man. It’s no wonder why we have such a vile history of treatment toward women who tried to stand up for themselves and make a difference in society.

These are religious practices so common in religion that they can’t even be considered the practices and beliefs of individuals. They are the practices and beliefs of the organizations as a whole. And yet, people still believe that morals and ethics come only from religion. I wish I was making this up, but I’ve literally been involved in heated arguments about where my morals come from if not religion.

If this is something you believe, let me rip that thought out of you right now. If I kicked my dog, I am acting in a way that is immoral. This isn’t because God or religion has told me so, but because morality is the name we have given to the practice of analyzing cause and effect. It is only an immoral action if it has a negative effect on another living entity.

Kicking my dog can cause both physical and emotional trauma to her. I don’t do this, not because religion tells me not to, but because when she is negatively effected by my actions, she is no longer as happy and carefree as usual. This lack of happiness can, in turn, cause me to become unhappy. A smile is contagious, after all. Our happiness is largely dependent on the happiness of others. Keeping others happy in a way that doesn’t infringe on the happiness of, yet, more people is a way of ensuring our own positive attitude. I don’t kick my dog because when she is happy, she lays next to me while I write and that make me happy. Is that selfish? Sure. But if our selfishness keeps everyone else happy, what’s wrong with being selfish in this one instance?

Religion doesn’t teach this. In fact, it encourages animal abuse many times, from whipping to beating to killing animals that don’t act in a way that we like. Religion encourages the same punishments toward people for various reasons. Whether you are talking about Catholicism, Christianity, Judaism, Islamism, Buddhism, or any other religion or their offshoots, no religion teaches equality, love, compassion or acceptance quite like Atheism.

But the indoctrination of religion goes much deeper than that. For example, just writing that previous sentence, I felt a twinge of irony that Atheism would be the one which teaches all of the positive practices. But why should I, or you, feel this way? I’ve spent this entire post explaining how religion is not a force for good, and yet, I so deeply associate the word ‘Atheist’ in a negative light that I can only see the positives of it as ironic and unnatural.

This isn’t because I’m admitting a truth that I don’t want to believe, it’s because of the aforementioned indoctrination. As a child, I was taught that religion is the force for good and non-religion was a force for evil. While I have spent enough time and energy proving this wrong, it is so deeply engrained that I cannot escape it on an emotional level, if I already have on a logical level.

Religion will always have a grasp, such as this, on me. The only thing that I can ever hope is that this effect will end for the next generation. I hope that I could insulate my children from being clouded. Help them become able to see things so clearly and teach them to question things so thoroughly that only associating religion as a negative and atheism as a positive will come as naturally to them in adulthood as breathing.

In sum, religion (or at least it’s stranglehold on us) must be stopped. If we have any hope of growing as a society, we cannot be hindered by archaic beliefs created thousands of years ago. There are many more things which I could say on this topic, but I will recommend anyone to read books on the topic, or listen to some podcasts (The Scathing Atheist and Cognitive Dissonance are two of my favorites).