The Problem
Religion is harmful. Throughout history so much conflict, war and misery has been caused by organized religion that religious people hardly even see it. They probably attribute it to human nature, or “other religions.”
I believe, and I think people would agree if they think about it, that religion has been the most effective and most used tool for mass conditioning and mass brain-washing. It has always brought an illogical imbalance to societies and has caused endless strife and animosity within them.
I’m not talking here about the wrongness of the concept of religion. All religion is bullshit, and all religion that divides people based on any criteria (believers and non-believers, sinners and saints, etc.) is harmful and must be treated as a disease of mind, but I’m not here to try to prove what seems to be obvious if you forget your childhood upbringing and conditioning. What I’m talking about is the danger and destructive effect of systematic, organized and political religion.
You look at human history, and almost every time there has been a war or oppression or genocide, it has had its roots in religion, in one way or the other. But, you might object, religion has brought happiness and peace of mind to billions. Well, while the extent of the happiness and the number of people affected by it is debatable, it can’t be denied that religious beliefs have been beneficial to many. But so has been the cartoons made by Disney! Have they not brought joy and happiness to hundreds of millions or perhaps billions, too? And there hasn’t been any wars or mass murders or tortures caused by a Walt Disney film. We must start analyzing the benefit/harm ratio of religions rationally.
So for some reason, among all the works of fiction it has been religion and religious materials that have gained special attention and have been given special status. Why? I don’t know. Maybe they have had more time with our collective brains to turn them into mush and turn us into brainless zombies. Maybe if you think about religion in terms of the theory of memes, it will become apparent that everything about a religion, specially the more widespread ones, is evolved with one most important purpose: to let it survive. That usually means spreading to as many people as possible. That means bringing people in and keeping them hooked up and destroying its rivals, be they other religions or science or whatnot. And we humans, have been the tools to be controlled by these vicious, dangerous and single-minded memes to ensure their survival.
If you think the purpose of any long lasting and popular religion is human happiness, you should think again. The purpose of any religion is its own survival and dominance. A few million people here and there doesn’t make much difference as long as the long-term success of that meme is guaranteed.
To those of you who still think, in this day and age, that any idea like religion should be enforced or even be allowed to be advertised or be a part of any government or ruling body, I can only say to look at history. Look at your own lives! Look at our own lives and the lives of those like us!
For those libertarians and agnostics among you, I have to say that I don’t think religion is something to be ignored and always categorized as a personal choice. Religion is harmful and dangerous. It’s not only publicly recognized dangerous religions and ideologies like Nazism that are dangerous, but the idea of any mass of humans controlled by any religion. We cannot afford to remain agnostic any more. People are entitled to their own beliefs of course, but those beliefs should never ever be the basis for special treatment or ever be let to come to power anywhere at any time.
yes it is harmful , but this is something people would have forever all people just cant think to fight for something scientific or peaceful every some years they need a hell and heaven to fight for.
and man if i would be honest islam is suck more than any other religion, if you are talking about history, anyway all of them are just ridiculous.
Who cares which one is better or worse? Why have mental illusions at all?! Why be infected by any of these virii and let them control us, too?
Ye, Why? People wants some kind of control, that’s why they built god maybe… i don’t know whats the root of all these things maybe cheating ,maybe to have something to describe themselves Or have something to live for, … we let these virii to control us because we are really a creature its too complicated to think about it more than this , and there is no need to know more because we live in this world with all of its limits ,and we are in this limits and we are part of these … religion will disappear someday but something else will take his place maybe another religion for bigger problems or for bigger cheaters,
communism and any other modern philosophy are just a religion like we see these days ,they are always around, they will improve or just change with our changes,
anyway fuck the situation it will change by itself first law of having this kind of god is to fear god and that’s why it will destroy it self, wow lots of words!
The situations is that some people feel the need to control other people. This seems to be the generic case. Now in an ideal world, no one would need to do so and we might lead to such a world some day, I doubt it
… but in the mean time, something is needed for guiding people short term, the beautiful aspect of short term control is that it leads to long term chaos, just like what you mentioned about religion. If all people had the same rationality levels, then they could come up with agreements and contracts and play by those contracts, like what wanted to happen in the grate Persian Empire, then there are the stupid people who make life harder for themselves and every body else and can not reason the same way, so there come these laws from the skies where there is no rationality and you have to follow them because you just have to … this way the self destructing, un-controllable layman might be guided, of course this is a short term solution which will erupt one day… just like the persian empire where eventually the Moghz showed up and mixed magic and religion into controlling factors which of coursed resulted in huge chaos and misery afterwards…
The problem has been defined well, the main question is, are there any solutions!?
I can’t even imagine a world without religion , religion is something that makes us living , i don’t have any particular religion but i have something for my self that i can call religion, sometimes im too much Relativity oriented but that’s harmful too and sometimes annoying me. you can call people just some useless stone , actually most of the times they are useless stones , but there is questions and answers that makes these people very unstable things(good or bad ,any mean they have for you), question and answers rises from some special men , they are special because of what they asking or what they answering and that makes chaos and chaos is a way to solve problems in nature way ,
whats the problem? religion ? wrong questions wrong answers ? cheaters or prophets?
people get an answer but they just Conclude what they want, and that’s what they want for now,
there is no long-term success ’cause there is no clear future,
people needs new answer for questions, that’s the only way to solve the religion problem for short term, most of the times answers come on purpose on somebodies purpose .
new answers? that is so dangerous to answer the questions ,’cause we are talking about very deeply problems in humanity ,
i think some religions have short term and also long term commands. sometimes there are even reasons for their commands. as ben franklin says “the whole world can be understood with logic” but how many people have the enough logic? how much our knoledge is? can we understand everything well at this time? if no so the logical solution is a religion sent by God. for an athiest it’s so senseless but i think the problem is about what people did and what they understood from religion. they changed it and curropt it. reading ideas of newton, franklin, pascal can help to understand the situation better.
as Amir h fassihi said: if all people had the same level of if all people had the same level of rationality and if humans had the complete knoledge of everything, then you could say “what is this stupid religion thing” why should the loard send something to logical and virtues and great people but the fact is we have many questions and no answers. i think the viewpoint of people like newton and ben franklin were the correct ones. religion itself is something needed, real and correct but like many other things people curropted it. franklin says “the whole world can be understood by logic and knoledge” but hey we don’t have enough logic and knoledge. the quotation is not exact. take a look at his wikiquotes page to see his quotes. the problem is “stupid people” they take everything and abuse it or use it in a wrong way. they take sciense and make nucklear bombs with it. they learn computer programming and then create viruses. they see the religion as a good way to fool people so they do…
as franklin said if a religion has the value then it don’t need government support. i think real religions like christianity and islam and their real believers don’t think that they are being controled by an idea. i think there is enough freedom in these religions but stupid clerics don’t allow ordinary man to understand the religion correctly. it only talks about some virtues and general guidelines and the best abstraction is the famouse “good thoughts, good deeds and good words”. comparing religion to what shakespear said or franklin virtues or rumi and hafez or any other more related thing is sensable but disney cartoons? last but not least as pascal said the worst things done in this world is done by the name of religion and even i want to say the worst things done against religion is done by religious governments and those fools that say they are religious. sorry for typos
about survival: everything from every idealogy to a computer game needs survival to become succesful. your game need to be advertised and bought to make your survive. you don’t make games to sell them, you make games to enjoy and let others enjoy but selling is an unavoidable fact. i am agree with you that it should not become something political but it’s completely in this state in our country.
I know that most (if not all) of us cannot live without some sort of belief system. We either can not, don’t want or can’t afford to weigh each and every small decision in our lives, and a belief system is just a pattern of decision making for us to fall back to.
However, the point I’m trying to make is that the popular religions have failed humanity as a good belief system. I even dare to say the idea of religion has failed us. We need to release ourselves from the bonds and create a new kind of system, one based on rationality and reality. We cannot let myths and pipe dreams control our masses, as they have done in the past and do still, for many or most of us.
I wish there was a perfect solution, but again I dare say there might be none. But we are humans. We are sentient. We are supposed to think and learn as a species. We should refine our systems for designing societies and belief systems and keep at it till we get the best that can be got.
There may even not be a best solution at any given time, but there are without doubt local maximums, and those are what we should strive for.