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In Reply to: Re: Bobby Kelly posted by Mig on January 26, 2008 at 22:07:56:
There are too many points in your post that I take issue with, and I simply don't have the time to debate you on each one. I will end this post with a couple reading recommendations that answer all your arguments and more, with more eloquence that I can muster.
First though, I'll point out a couple things. I think you are missing my point when you deflect it with the notion of religious maturity. You claim that "religious maturity allows the individual to recognize evil...". That's b.s. (baloney sandwich). In my opinion it is just the opposite. Religious "maturity", as in being fully matured in their particular religious dogma, allows believers to make their evil seem good (just think of all the evil done to indigenous peoples by zealous missionaries claiming to know god's will as but one of many examples).
Along with "religious maturity" you claim that "a strong education on religion" would help protect a naive 16 year old (or any one else) from religious evil doers. I agree with that, but not in the way you might think. I think all children should be taught that all religions are equal, equally wrong. I think they should be taught a comparative religion course at the appropriate stage of their education. They should be taught, for example, that most people are agnostic or atheistic about most of the gods ever worshipped but one or maybe a few, and that agnostics and atheists simply go one step further by rejecting all gods. I think all holy books should have a place in the classroom: I'd prefer on the fiction shelf, but would settle for the philosophy or historical shelf. I think it is abhorrent to indoctrinate a child into any particular religion. An adult's right to religious freedom is not absolute, it does not give them the right to deny their children their human rights. For example, an adult's right to believe what they will does not give them the right to endanger the life of their child because of that belief. And I would argue further, that it does not give them the right to deny their children their future rights they will hold as an adult, including their right to religious freedom.
You may not be a "religionist" but you are a believer, and I've found that more often than not, the argument that you offer here, that religious belief improves people and helps to civilize society, is the argument of last resort when all of their other beliefs have melted in the light of reason. It really is an unfounded argument, as an honest review of history will easily show, and in my already stated opinion religion is not just amoral but positively immoral.
This is not to say that the faults and crimes of religion are necessarily found in the behavior of its adherents; some are evil doers (as in my missionary example) while some exhibit exemplary behavior. No, the faults and crimes of religion are to be found mainly in its original precepts. Some of the main ones:
* presenting a false picture of the world to the innocent and credulous
* the doctrine of blood sacrifice
* the doctrine of atonement
* the doctrine of eternal reward and/or punishment
* the imposition of impossible tasks or rules
For further explanation of those, I suggest the excellent book God Is Not Great: how religion poisons everything by Christopher Hitchens. That and The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins anticipate and answer every argument that believers make. Together, they certainly make a better case against religion than my limited effort here. Unfortunately, the people who could most benefit from those books, and many others like them, will never read them, perhaps because they fear that their faith is so weak that it will crumble in the face of doubt and reason.
