Religion Detrimental to Society

Religious societies tend to be
less, rather than more,
moral than Secular societies.

The Bible itself had reservations about Religion { Isaiah 58:1-10 }: "Shout with the voice of a trumpet blast; tell my people of their sins! Yet they act so pious! They come to the Temple every day and are so delighted to hear the reading of my laws - just as though they would obey them - just as though they don't despise the commandments of their God! How anxious they are to worship correctly; oh, how they love the Temple services! 'We have fasted before you,' they say. 'Why aren't you impressed? Why don't you see our sacrifices? Why don't you hear our prayers? We have done much penance, and you don't even notice it!'
I'll tell you why! Because you are living in evil pleasure even while you are fasting, and you keep right on oppressing your workers. Look, what good is fasting when you keep on fighting and quarreling? This kind of fasting will never get you anywhere with me. Is this what I want - this doing of penance and bowing like reeds in the wind, putting on sackcloth and covering yourselves with ashes? Is this what you call fasting? The kind of fast I want is that you stop oppressing those who work for you and treat them fairly and give them what they earn. I want you to share your food with the hungry and destitute. Clothe those who are cold, and don't hide from relatives who need your help.
If you do these things, God will shed his own glorious light upon you. He will heal you. Your godliness will lead you forward, goodness will be a shield before you, and the glory of the Lord will protect you from behind. Then, when you call, the Lord will answer. 'Yes, I am here,' he will quickly reply. All you need to do is to stop oppressing the weak and stop making false accusations and spreading vicious rumors! "Feed the hungry! Help those in trouble! Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you shall be as bright as day."

{Matthew 7: 21 - 29} "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?' Then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.' "Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell - and great was its fall!" Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes."

{ 1 John 3:17-29 } "If someone who is supposed to be a Christian has money enough to live well, and sees a brother in need and won't help him - how can God's love be within him? Little children, let us stop just saying we love people; let us really love them, and show it by our actions. Then we will know for sure, by our actions, that we are on God's side, and our consciences will be clear, even when we stand before the Lord.
But if we have bad consciences and feel that we have done wrong, the Lord will surely feel it even more, for he knows everything we do. But, dearly loved friends, if our consciences are clear, we can come to the Lord with perfect assurance and trust, and get whatever we ask for because we are obeying him and doing the things that please him. And this is what God says we must do: Believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another. Those who do what God says - they are living with God and he with them. We know this is true because the Holy Spirit he has given us tells us so."

{ James 1:27 - 2:9 } "The Christian who is pure and without fault, from God the Father's point of view, is the one who takes care of orphans and widows, and who remains true to the Lord - not soiled and dirtied by his contacts with the world. Dear brothers, how can you claim that you belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, if you show favoritism to rich people and look down on poor people? If a man comes into your church dressed in expensive clothes and with valuable gold rings on his fingers, and at the same moment another man comes in who is poor and dressed in thread-bare clothes, and you make a lot of fuss over the rich man and give him the best seat in the house and say to the poor man, "You can stand over there if you like or else sit on the floor" - well, judging a man by his wealth shows that you are guided by wrong motives.
Listen to me, dear brothers: God has chosen poor people to be rich in faith, and the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs, for that is the gift God has promised to all those who love him. And yet, of the two strangers, you have despised the poor man. Don't you realize that it is usually the rich men who pick on you and drag you into court? And all too often they are the ones who laugh at Jesus Christ, whose noble name you bear. Yes indeed, it is good when you truly obey our Lord's command, "You must love and help your neighbors just as much as you love and take care of yourself." But you are breaking this law of our Lord's when you favor the rich and fawn over them; it is sin."

" The dark side of faith" By Rosa Brooks

It turns out that the study, by "evolutionary scientist" Gregory S. Paul, which I featured prominently on this page briefly in 2007 was fraudulent, so I apologize for having given it any publicity. If you would like to see why I removed it, go to magicstatistics.com/2005/12/30/dogma-bites-man/

A true believer makes the case for the churches :

"Secular (public) schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . we need believing people."
Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933, from a speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordant of 1933.]
"I know that here and there the objection has been raised: Yes, but you have deserted Christianity. No, it is not that we have deserted Christianity; it is those who came before us who deserted Christianity. (He is speaking of the very Liberal administration that preceeded his, which he and the churches despised and berated.) We have only carried through a clear division between politics, which have to do with terrestrial things, and religion, which must concern itself with the celestial sphere. There has been no interference with the doctrine of the Confessions (i.e. Christian denominations) or with their religious freedom, nor will there be any such interference. On the contrary the State protects religion, though always on the one condition that religion will not be used as a cover for political ends.
"There may have been a time when even parties founded on the ecclesiastical basis were a necessity. At that time Liberalism was opposed to the Church, while Marxism was anti-religious. But that time is past. National Socialism neither opposes the Church nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary, it stands on the ground of a real Christianity.
"The Church's interests cannot fail to coincide with ours alike in our fight against the symptoms of degeneracy in the world of to-day, in our fight against the Bolshevist culture, against an atheistic movement, against criminality, and in our struggle for the consciousness of a community in our national life, for the conquest of hatred and disunion between the classes, for the conquest of civil war and unrest, of strife and discord. These are not anti-Christian, these are Christian principles."
( Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered at Koblenz, August 26, 1934. )

See much more on CatholicArrogance.org/Catholic/Hitlersfaith.html

History is replete with examples of the Christian Church being responsible for terrible atrocities. This may well be true of other religions as well, but Christianity is the one which dominates my world as a U.S. citizen, and it is the one that I care most about because it is the one I and most of my acquaintances identify with. The "mother church" of Christianity, the "Roman Catholic Church", has set a blazing pace for the other Christian churches, many of which have followed its lead. The self-professed "one. true, holy, Catholic Church has been respojnsible for
torturing and killing thousands of fellow Christians (on the grounds that they were "heretics" or "schismatics). See Catholic victims .

exploiting millions of Native Americans ( whom it considered "infidels"). See Native American victims .

torturing and killing millions of Jews (on the grounds that they were "Christ-killers). See Jewish victims.

torturing and killing thousands of Orthodox Christians and Muslims (a Catholic version of "ethnic cleansing"). See Orthodox Christian and Muslim victims.
../Catholic/IrishChurchSlaves.html
exploiting scores of young Irish women . See Young Irish Catholic female victims ("Magdalen laundry girls").

torturing and killing thousands of homosexuals over the centuries and for continuing its persecution of homosexuals in our time by defying civil society's efforts to grant homosexuals justice and equality. See CatholicArrogance.Org/Churchvsgays.html .

imposing its celibate male views of sexuality on married people who know much more about male and female sexuality than they do, and for denying Catholic and non-Catholic mothers and fathers alike the rights to decide for themselves how to live out their sexuality and how many children they will bear and raise. See Catholic Church's obsession with everything sexual..

posing as authorities on moral questions when they have no proven record to justify such authority. See CatholicArrogance.Org/RC_blindleaders.html .

aggravating the poverty of millions of women around the world by conspiring with fundamentalist Christians in America and Muslims around the world to deny poor and powerless women access not just to abortion but to family planning and other related services. See http://CatholicArrogance.Org/ChristianChoice

tipping the balance between Conservative and Progressive political parties in favor of those who promote the welfare of the rich and the powerful at the expense of the poor and the oppressed.
See much more at CatholicArrogance.Org/ReligiousRight.htm.

On the world scene, here's the breakdown on which countries have more and which have less corruption: nationmaster.com/graph/gov_cor-government-corruption/AFR. Notice how much better less religious "socialist" countries rate as opposed to pious, conservative ones do.
"It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui."
- Helen Keller
"We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another." - Jonathan Swift
Abraham Lincoln never joined a church because he could not find one that preached what Jesus taught: "Whenever I find a church that takes as its creed, 'To love God with all one's heart and soul and strength and mind and one's neighbor as himself,' I will join that church."
"Religions often make the kind of demand that Communism does, we judge them on the bais of what they promise, rather than what they deliver." - Ray Dubuque's paraphrase of what someone posted online.

The Pew Research Center released a poll on 12-19-2002 which attempted to measure the impact of globalization, modernization, rapid technological and cultural change and terrorism. Here is how more than 38,000 adults in 44 countries answered the question as to whether they considered religion to be personally important:
(North American countries are shown in bold.)

Country % Country %
Senegal 97 A really big gap
appears here between
the more religious (left)
& the less religious (below).

Indonesia 95

Nigeria 92

India 92

Pakistan 91 Argentina 39

Ivory Coast 91 Ukraine 35

Mali 90 Poland 36

Philippines 88 Uzbekistan 35

Bangladesh 88 Great Britain 33

South Africa 87 Canada 30

Kenya 85 Slovakia 29

Uganda 85 Italy 27

Ghana 84 South Korea 25

Tanzania 83 Vietnam 24

Angola 80 Germany 21

Guatemala 80 Russia 14

Brazil 77 Bulgaria 13

Honduras 72 Japan 12

Peru 69 France 11

Bolivia 66 Czech Republic 11

Turkey 65

Venezuela 61

U.S. 59

Mexico 57

Why do people feel such a great need for a "church" (as opposed to just having a philosophy or ideology)? IMHO, it is because they want to get all the answers to their questions about matters that the sciences can't answer in one place, in one package, from one authority. It requires too much effort to have to think for oneself and to find one answer here and another there and not know where the next answer is going to come from, or how long before it might become necessary to start looking for another better answer.

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