Before I get started, I will preface this by stating that I do not believe that religion makes you a bad person. In no way do I believe that it would reduce your value as a human being in any way.
Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I will start.
Let us start with the foundation of all religions - faith. It requires faith for anyone to believe in any religion. Now, humanity, in essence, has to have faith in something in order to not lose hope in their future. Upon examining society as a whole, it is easy to lose yourself in all the negativity from the most external sources - murder, rape, and Donald Trump - to the most internal - the philosophical questioning of what meaning there is in this world to us as individuals or even as a society. Faith that there is meaning, that we won't know someone who gets murdered, raped, or turn into Donald Trump, that's what keeps us together through the bad times.
Faith is also what prevents us from taking things to a whole different level of understanding. From a philosophical standpoint, there requires an inherent distrust in faith in order to even want to research an understanding of a topic. If, then, faith is a necessity and also something that prevents us from understanding more deeply, where is the breaking point?
This is the most dangerous aspect of religion. Ingrained in every religion is an inherent distrust in questioning the religion itself. Religion teaches us that by searching for meaning outside of the religion, to search for an understanding of the world around us, is to betray the very faith one has in the religion itself. Religion requires absolutely no proof to support it's claim - it only requires itself and the one believing it to affirm it's existence.
Thusly, we have a circular pattern that encapsulates nothing more than itself, and the more one dedicates themselves to that circle the more they stop relying on proof to believe something. Eventually, because there is no supporting evidence for any religion, one must ignore all proof in order to justify their very belief system.
This is the foundation of what makes religion so dangerous. When confronting a religious person as to the evidence of the Big Bang Theory, as an example, the religious will come up with various stories to confirm their own belief in their religion as opposed to look at the evidence and see even an inkling of potential truth in the theory. If one can be so blind to facts as to essentially shun the very notion then immediately you're automatically stuck in a scenario where reality as ceased to matter.
Of course, that scenario is a rather extreme one so let me dial it back a bit to the faith that God always has a plan, which is often times preached by Christians and the subsets of Christianity as a means to justify bad things that happen. This is perhaps the most bothersome saying, at least to me, as all it really does is confirm their own justification in their faith as it can be said in any event and hold equal weight - which is to say it holds none. If a person gets murdered or raped or turned into Donald Trump, by saying that one phrase that person is essentially saying that no matter how bad things just got for that person, it is okay. Just get over it. It is a complete lack of empathy for someone, presumably, they supposedly care about.
That touches upon a whole other danger of religion, but I will try to stay on track of faith for now.
Then, of course, no one can possibly understand God's plan so don't even bother questioning that, either. Yet another case where faith is a requirement as opposed to realizing that it is a societal issue.
The entire concept that we should go through our lives without questioning things is absolutely absurd. The one thing that drives humanity, and has gotten humanity to the point we are currently at, is questioning things. No one ever achieved anything by just putting faith into things getting better, or some magical all seeing spirit in the sky was watching over everything. No, even when a religious person accomplished something it was because they made actions.
I can see all the religious screaming at their computer screens now about how it was God's will that they did whatever they did. Yeah, and it was God's will that a girl got their drink spiked at a Brett Kavanaugh party, too. It was also God's will that your Republican candidate is paying some male prostitute to fuck him in the ass, too, while his wife is at home crying herself to sleep because her husband won't include her. Or is that one Satan accomplishing the impossible by defeating God's plan? Only God knows, so just put your faith in him. It definitely couldn't be because they like raping women or getting ass fucked. A George Michaels song just popped into my head.
Praying is, perhaps, the most egregious example of faith. If your all knowing, all powerful God has a plan for everything and everyone, what do you believe praying is going to do? If he has a plan for everything then thanking him for doing whatever he was going to do anyway is not going to accomplish anything. Praying as an effort to get him to change his mind for whatever his plan is, again, will do nothing because he has a plan. That damn George Michaels song is haunting me for some reason.
More than anything else, though, faith just prevents people from taking responsibility for their own lives. A person who believes something so completely as to disregard all evidence to the contrary means that they can justify anything action or outcome their heart and mind desire to justify.
And now fucking Fred Durst had to go and ruin a perfectly good - alright, it was a pretty lame original, too - song.
-Dustin S. Stover
Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I will start.
Let us start with the foundation of all religions - faith. It requires faith for anyone to believe in any religion. Now, humanity, in essence, has to have faith in something in order to not lose hope in their future. Upon examining society as a whole, it is easy to lose yourself in all the negativity from the most external sources - murder, rape, and Donald Trump - to the most internal - the philosophical questioning of what meaning there is in this world to us as individuals or even as a society. Faith that there is meaning, that we won't know someone who gets murdered, raped, or turn into Donald Trump, that's what keeps us together through the bad times.
Faith is also what prevents us from taking things to a whole different level of understanding. From a philosophical standpoint, there requires an inherent distrust in faith in order to even want to research an understanding of a topic. If, then, faith is a necessity and also something that prevents us from understanding more deeply, where is the breaking point?
This is the most dangerous aspect of religion. Ingrained in every religion is an inherent distrust in questioning the religion itself. Religion teaches us that by searching for meaning outside of the religion, to search for an understanding of the world around us, is to betray the very faith one has in the religion itself. Religion requires absolutely no proof to support it's claim - it only requires itself and the one believing it to affirm it's existence.
Thusly, we have a circular pattern that encapsulates nothing more than itself, and the more one dedicates themselves to that circle the more they stop relying on proof to believe something. Eventually, because there is no supporting evidence for any religion, one must ignore all proof in order to justify their very belief system.
This is the foundation of what makes religion so dangerous. When confronting a religious person as to the evidence of the Big Bang Theory, as an example, the religious will come up with various stories to confirm their own belief in their religion as opposed to look at the evidence and see even an inkling of potential truth in the theory. If one can be so blind to facts as to essentially shun the very notion then immediately you're automatically stuck in a scenario where reality as ceased to matter.
Of course, that scenario is a rather extreme one so let me dial it back a bit to the faith that God always has a plan, which is often times preached by Christians and the subsets of Christianity as a means to justify bad things that happen. This is perhaps the most bothersome saying, at least to me, as all it really does is confirm their own justification in their faith as it can be said in any event and hold equal weight - which is to say it holds none. If a person gets murdered or raped or turned into Donald Trump, by saying that one phrase that person is essentially saying that no matter how bad things just got for that person, it is okay. Just get over it. It is a complete lack of empathy for someone, presumably, they supposedly care about.
That touches upon a whole other danger of religion, but I will try to stay on track of faith for now.
Then, of course, no one can possibly understand God's plan so don't even bother questioning that, either. Yet another case where faith is a requirement as opposed to realizing that it is a societal issue.
The entire concept that we should go through our lives without questioning things is absolutely absurd. The one thing that drives humanity, and has gotten humanity to the point we are currently at, is questioning things. No one ever achieved anything by just putting faith into things getting better, or some magical all seeing spirit in the sky was watching over everything. No, even when a religious person accomplished something it was because they made actions.
I can see all the religious screaming at their computer screens now about how it was God's will that they did whatever they did. Yeah, and it was God's will that a girl got their drink spiked at a Brett Kavanaugh party, too. It was also God's will that your Republican candidate is paying some male prostitute to fuck him in the ass, too, while his wife is at home crying herself to sleep because her husband won't include her. Or is that one Satan accomplishing the impossible by defeating God's plan? Only God knows, so just put your faith in him. It definitely couldn't be because they like raping women or getting ass fucked. A George Michaels song just popped into my head.
Praying is, perhaps, the most egregious example of faith. If your all knowing, all powerful God has a plan for everything and everyone, what do you believe praying is going to do? If he has a plan for everything then thanking him for doing whatever he was going to do anyway is not going to accomplish anything. Praying as an effort to get him to change his mind for whatever his plan is, again, will do nothing because he has a plan. That damn George Michaels song is haunting me for some reason.
More than anything else, though, faith just prevents people from taking responsibility for their own lives. A person who believes something so completely as to disregard all evidence to the contrary means that they can justify anything action or outcome their heart and mind desire to justify.
And now fucking Fred Durst had to go and ruin a perfectly good - alright, it was a pretty lame original, too - song.
-Dustin S. Stover
